Raphael Hertzog wrote: > > * If doing as the man page suggests and avoiding a pre-depends > > by testing dpkg-maintscript-helper supports. > > Here you'd presumably still want to let the action happen > > in a later upgrade if the old conffile is still present. > > (At least when removing an old conffile.. doing that when > > renaming a conffile is probably unsafe.) > > What exactly do you fear when renaming a conffile?
The scenario I envision is a package upgrade that moves a conffile, but also changes it. Suppose the new version is needed to avoid breakage. There is no pre-depends on dpkg. The preinst does not run dpkg-maintscript-helper, because a new enough dpkg is not installed yet. Then dpkg is upgraded, and then the postinst runs (a low proability, but possible scenario w/o a pre-depends). So the postinst will run dpkg-maintscript-helper without prepare_mv_conffile having had a chance to check the old conffile md5sum and move unmodified ones out of the way. So finish_mv_conffile will move the old, unmodified conffile into the new location. The new conffile will be left as .dpkg-new. Does the user see a modified conffile prompt at this point? I haven't checked. Real culprit here is the avoiding of the pre-depends which allows the postinst to run it despite the preinst not. The version check may make the scenario less likely to occur. > > * In debhelper, which needs to move conffiles sometimes, and doesn't > > have package version information available. > > I hope you will provide a way for the maintainer to supply the required > version. This is difficult to do in both cases where debhelper has needed to move conffiles before. -- see shy jo
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
