On Fri, 2003-07-25 at 11:19, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > Not really. Why do we need this overly micromanaging rule in > policy? As long as it understood that user data is not to be deleted, > why can't I put user data in /var/lib/<pkg>/ if I so desire, as long > as I take care to not rm -rf that dir?
That's fine. The original complaint [1] was that dosemu purged user data. At some stage it was suggested [2] that packages should not delete entire directories indiscriminately. I replied [3] that packages be allowed to delete at least /var/lib/<pkg>/ . You are right that we should not _require_ any package to delete its /var/lib/<pkg>/ . What I am more concerned about is configuration file directories. A lot of packages delete /etc/ trees on purge. Earlier I was thinking that Debian should have a policy forbidding that, but now think that existing policy may be sufficient. Under current policy, a package can delete /etc/foo only if no other package uses /etc/foo to store configuration files. If another package does use /etc/foo to store configuration files then deleting those files would violate 10.7.3 and 10.7.4 . [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?archive=no&bug=201023 [2] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=debian-devel&m=105827881413400&w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=debian-devel&m=105833979508949&w=2 [3] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=debian-devel&m=105878073004572&w=2 -- Thomas
