Holger Levsen <hol...@layer-acht.org> writes:
> On Wed, May 14, 2025 at 09:30:25AM +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> Are there any guarantees on semantics for package removals? Will the
>> user/group be removed from /etc/{passwd,group} or not? Will it remove
>> the home directory? What happens if the home directory is not empty?
>> Will it remove files owned by that user/group elsewhere? I recall
>> different packages have different preferences on these topics.
>
> see #228692 from 20024, or maybe directly jump to
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=228692#63
> from at least 2020.
>
> To quote Russ once again: 'I think Policy should say something like
> "created users and groups should not be removed by default, but may be
> removed on purge if the local administrator explicitly requests this, either
> for that package or as a system-wide default."
>
> I think this is still the best practice, even if underdocumented.
>
> Finally I'd like to add that I would not remove home directories even on
> purge, unless they are empty.Right -- and I just read that Guillem wants dpkg to have native support for this, which really sounds like the best way forward to me. Hopefully then the behaviour for user/group removal on package removal will be more consistent. Meanwhile I'm not sure it is worth investing time to increase adoption of dh-sequence-sysusers, at least for me, unless it actually solves some real problem (like https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1100030 ...). /Simon
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