Hi Thomas, I understand that this discussion belongs to debian-policy and that it would be great to find a global solution. However, could you please also send your future posts to debian-emacsen? We may find a local solution for the emacsen init files, regardless of the final decision on debian-policy.
[BTW, I like your "callout" proposal.] Thanks, -- Rafael Laboissiere On Mon, Jul 03, 2000 at 05:17:36PM -0400, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > Joey Hess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > > > Specifically, because the files are conffiles, they are not removed > > > when the package is removed, and so the files stay around to continue > > > to affect the behavior of emacs. This happened to me with the user-de > > > and user-es packages, which I installed long ago, and long ago > > > removed. But the scripts they install have a bug on current emacs20, > > > and because the scripts are conffiles, they didn't get deleted. > > > > Look at how this is handled by packages that contain menu-methods files > > for the menu package. They have the same basic problem: script conffiles > > that > > are left around when the package is removed, and will not work. The > > solution is this in the postrm: > > > > if [ "$1" = "remove" -a -f "$inst" ]; then > > chmod a-x /etc/menu-methods/package > > fi > > > > (And equivilant code in the postinst.) > > > > Menu recognizes that it should ignore non-executable files in that > > directrory. I think that the emacsen packages should use a similar > > method to allow the scripts to be disabled. Execute permissions might be > > the wrong fix, but something along the same lines should work. > > That would work. > > I would like *something* specified so the packages which currently > install emacs scripts as conffiles that persist can fix their > behavior. One maintainer rudely said "this isn't a bug, nyaa nyaa"; > most wonder what the right thing is. So I'd like it if we could reach > some closure quickly. > > > > I think we should specify that programs should not install conffiles > > > which change the behavior of different packages > > > > That is an incredibly vague statement, and there are probably 100 > > different things in debian that violate it in perfectly sensible > > behavior. (See above menu-methods example for one.) > > The menu-methods technique works fine, but I don't think it would > violate my proposed policy addition. Perhaps a better way to say it > is: > > "Packages which install conffiles should be careful that those > conffiles do not continue to affect the behavior of other programs > once the package has been removed. It should not be necessary to > purge a package in order to prevent it from having an affect on other > programs." > > menu-methods installers would meet this by changing the mode. Emacs > scripts could do it by my "callout" suggestion or by having the emacs > load code do something more clever than it does now. > > Thomas > --
