On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 02:02:04PM -0300, Daniel Ruoso wrote: > What if the packages tells to dpkg which files or directories it will > create on the user's home directory and when a package is purged the > user could run a program to purge the files of packages that no longer > exists.
I have a better idea :) What if packages don't leave droppings in my home directory in the first place? I have all sorts of dotfiles (and even dot-directories) that I never asked for. It's reasonable for a program to install a dotfile when I configure it differently from the default, but there's no reason to create a dotfile that's identical to the default. In addition to being annoying in themselves, such useless dotfiles get in the way when a newer version has different defaults or incompatible configuration fields. When I do configure a program (if it doesn't have an interactive configuration interface), I want to do it by creating a small, human-editable file that contains the _differences_ from the defaults. So even then I have no use for a copy of the default configuration. (If I want an example, I can look in /usr/doc/$foo/examples, which is a better place for it than $HOME.) Richard Braakman