Re: Debian Configuration Packaging System
I'll note that we wrap our dpkg-divert calls with a bunch of error-handling code that we found quite important for correctly recovering from people hitting ^C in the middle of installation (see <http://debathena/config-packages/code/config-package-dev-4.2/divert.sh.in> for the code). Earlier iterations that did not do this were plagued with problems whenever there were errors in installation. We also ran into a few packages which will overwrite configuration files that they manage via debconf, overwriting our symlink every time the relevant package is upgraded. But I think that's a bug in those Debian packages, since the same problem would occur for any manual changes to those configuration files as well (I think in the cases I've seen it is a failure to check whether an upgrade is occuring when generating the configuration file in postinst). What other problems have you experienced? -Tim Abbott On Sun, 24 Feb 2008, Russ Allbery wrote: Timothy G Abbott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Anders Kaseorg and I created a system of CDBS modules (which we've tentatively packaged as the config-package-dev package) for creating Debian configuration packages. By configuration packages, we mean packages that configure an existing Debian system by applying dpkg-divert to configuration files. Our configuration package system makes the process of creating configuration packages efficient. It's generally accepted wisdom that dpkg-divert doesn't work properly with configuration files and isn't safe. I admit to have done something similar in the past, but I have noticed odd things that didn't matter for my particular use, but which meant that the support didn't work right. That's likely to be an issue for a general package. Fixing dpkg-divert to work correctly with configuration files (if possible) would probably be a good idea. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Configuration Packaging System
On Sun, 24 Feb 2008, Russ Allbery wrote: Tim Abbott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: We also ran into a few packages which will overwrite configuration files that they manage via debconf, overwriting our symlink every time the relevant package is upgraded. But I think that's a bug in those Debian packages, since the same problem would occur for any manual changes to those configuration files as well (I think in the cases I've seen it is a failure to check whether an upgrade is occuring when generating the configuration file in postinst). Configuration files generated by debconf may not be manually changed without running this risk, including by humans. Generally, this is documented in the file. I have several of those in packages I maintain. This is a pretty widely accepted way of dealing with configuration files, and the right way to modify those files is with debconf pre-seeding rather than by trying to overwrite the file, IMO. Many such files have configuration options other than those managed by debconf (/etc/krb5.conf would be a good example). For those files, pre-seeding debconf doesn't suffice. What other problems have you experienced? I've seen the diverted configuration file disappear, making it impossible to undo the diversion, and never did track down why that happened. I haven't run into any problems in cases where the diversion is never dropped, though. (But renaming the package that manages the diversions is something that dpkg-divert doesn't deal with at all well.) Renaming a package requires no special effort in our system (the new package and the old package will conflict because they divert the same file, and the old package will remove the diversion on prerm because it knows it is being removed, and then the new package will install the new diversion on postinst). -Tim Abbott -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RFC: convenience copy of cddlib
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009, Francesco P. Lovergine wrote: > On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 09:07:26AM -0400, brem...@unb.ca wrote: > > > > I see two solutions so far: > > > > 1) patch the debian cddlib package to produce a third library, > >libcdd_gmp (or whatever) that can be linked together with > >libcdd. This basically migrates the polymake abi changes to the > >debian package, and maybe eventually upstream. Do you know whether the polymake developers have contacted upstream to try to get their changes merged into upstream cddlib? I'm not enthusiastic about changing the library ABI in Debian in a way that isn't eventually going upstream. -Tim Abbott -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
