Anton Zinoviev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Sep 26, 2005 at 08:43:38PM +0200, Frank K.ster wrote: >> Anton Zinoviev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> > Do you think that this bug is due to misbehaviour of dpkg? True, >> > 01tetex.cnf is a configuration file, but I hadn't edited it so it had >> > to be removed during the downgrading. >> >> No, dpkg won't remove unused configuration files upon upgrading, and it >> won't do so upon downgrading, either. For the upgrading case, the >> maintainer scripts has to take care - rename the file in preinst, take >> over settings, moving out of the way or whatever. For the downgrading >> case, we don't provide any support. >> >> dpkg will *only* remove a file when the package is purged. > > Yes. My point was that the file was not changed by the user so > keeping it is evil. If dpkg doesn't ask me for a permission to change > the contents of an unchanged conffile then it logical to also remove > it when it does not exist in the upgraded/downgraded package any more.
No, it isn't. Everything is designed from the point of view of an upgrade, and in this case "preserving local changes" of course must include *not* to remove an unused conffile. It might contain important work of the local administrator. In case the maintainer knows that the presence of the old conffile would be harmful, he has to do something about it (like moving it out of the way), but he may still not silently delete it. In case of a downgrade, this could in principle be done. But supporting downgrades would increase both the work for maintainers and the complexity of maintainer scripts by an insane amount, and is therefore not supported. People who try unstable or even experimental packages are expected to be able to perform a downgrade manually. For example, you can purge nearly any package (unless it's essential, I think) with --force-depends if you install the working, older version immediately afterwards. So essentially there is no bug, and there never was one. You just expect too much from us. Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich Debian Developer
