On 2021-01-03 09:02 +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> I have recently split the mime-support package in two: media-types and
> mailcap. But I wonder if I handled the conffiles correctly.
>
> mime-support had the conffiles `/etc/mime.types` and
> `/etc/mailcap.order` until version 3.64. Version 3.65 is a transitional
> package containing only a changelog and a copyright file, and depends on
> media-types and mailcap. And these two packages declare a Breaks and
> Replaces relationship against mime-support << 3.65.
>
> As a result of the upgrade, the conffiles are now owned by the new
> packages. But dpkg still keeps a record that the mime-support has
> the "obsolete" version of them:
>
> # dpkg-query -W -f='${Conffiles}\n' media-types
> /etc/mime.types 43fa90aa9a5e009997f451be169ac530
>
> # md5sum /etc/mime.types
> 43fa90aa9a5e009997f451be169ac530 /etc/mime.types
>
> # dpkg-query -W -f='${Conffiles}\n' mailcap
> /etc/mailcap.order ba07e08a7fe3741d0b8339127963190e
>
> # dpkg-query -W -f='${Conffiles}\n' mime-support
> /etc/mime.types 0d516753aee0a2c670c79667aad0c836 obsolete
> /etc/mailcap.order ba07e08a7fe3741d0b8339127963190e obsolete
>
> I have received reports from users who consider this a problem. Indeed,
> in the case of mailcap it is potentially confusing as the conffile's MD5
> sum has not changed.
>
> On the other hand, once mime-support is purged, which is how
> transitionnal packages eventually should be handled, the situation is
> clean. So I am not sure if there is a problem here.
>
> Is it needed to clean dpkg's database so that it does not report
> obsolete conffiles for mime-support? (Actually, I would have expected
> dpkg to do this automagically given the Breaks and Replaces
> relationship.)
Looks like you have hit #886389[1] in dpkg, I don't think you can do
anything about it in your packages.
Cheers,
Sven
1. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=886389
