Package: ucf Version: 2.0018.1 Severity: wishlist Tags: patch Hi Manoj,
it seems that some maintainers think that ucf is the solution to everything. In particular to save them from proper handling of debconf-managed configuration files. I've recently run across a bug report "$foo unconditionally overwrites configuration upon update" and it turned out that the postinst just took the value it found in the debconf cache and wrote it into the file, nuking local changes. Unfortunately, the solution they too was to put the file under ucf control, nothing else - this "solved" their RCness problem, but would give many unneeded ucf prompts, and even bogus if the change was because of giving a different answer to debconf upon dpkg-reconfigure. I pointed out the error to them. I was then told that such questions are what they "usually see" with ucf-managed conffiles, and that the manpage of ucf gave them the impression they were acting correctly. Therefore I suggest to apply the following patch: --- ucf-2.0018.1.old/ucf.1 2007-01-18 23:17:48.000000000 +0100 +++ ucf-2.0018.1/ucf.1 2007-01-26 15:16:54.000000000 +0100 @@ -83,6 +83,13 @@ .B dpkg normally provides for .I \*(lqconffiles\*(rq +It also can be combined with +.B debconf +to gather configuration information from the user. Note, however, +that it is not a replacement to proper handling of debconf-managed +configuration files, as detailed in +.B debconf-devel(7), +it just can be added on top of it. .PP Additionally, this script provides facilities for transitioning a file that had not been provided Regards, Frank -- Dr. Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
