>There has recently on #debian-devel been a few discussions about wether >it was allowed to edit other packages configuration files >(not 'conffiles') in maintainer scripts.
For example by me. For me it isn't clear. For example we grub/grub2 maintainers have the problem that some people still have /sbin/update-grub in their /etc/kernel-img.conf. grub-legacy has a wrapper to warn about this since etch, but we recently got a bug report in grub2 who had it still in place (#500631). After I asked in #debian-devel my solution to this problem was to just abort in the preinst with an error message. Then I noticed #470894 where Colin Watson wanted to edit /etc/default/grub inside of grub-installer. And there I told him that I'm unsure if policy allows this and told him my solution to our problem. In message #36 [0] and #46 [1], he told me that we should either keep it as an symlink or just edit automatically /etc/kernel-img.conf /etc/kernel-img.conf is edited by grub-installer automatically to add update-grub to it. For the /etc/default/grub one he suggested to switch to ucf for it so that it isn't anymore a problem with policy. So I trusted him and implemented both changes (running sed over kernel-img.conf and ucf for /etc/default/grub). After I did it I saw that he added himself as an Uploader to debian-policy, so I even more trusted him that he knows if policy allows this or not. But it seems I was wrong and policy seems to forbid this. So I'd need to fallback to the fail in preinst method. But then I don't know what grub-installer should do for #470894, except we provide a update-etc-default-grub script which just runs sed over it, just to compl with policy. 10.7.4 says: The owning package should also provide a program that the other packages may use to modify the configuration file. The related packages must use the provided program to make any desired modifications to the configuration file. These 2 sentences together don't make sense for me. They should provide a program that other packages -may_ use and then the next sentence it's a _must_. Oh and yes I even looked up the meaning of may in a dictionary because english isn't my first language. [0] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=470894#36 [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=470894#46 -- Felix Zielcke -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
