Hi, On Montag, 4. Januar 2010, Russ Allbery wrote: > There are several arguments that say that such data shouldn't be deleted > on purge. I don't know how persuasive they are.
I'll answer them in reverse order :-)
> * Whether it makes sense given Debian semantics or not, users just don't
> expect removing packages to, from their perspective, destroy data.
> Other distributions don't seem to do this.
We are talking about "purging", not "removal", thus I consider this argument
invalid. I expect "purge" to remove all traces of a package from the system.
> * It's sometimes necessary to purge a package and reinstall it to fix some
> weird problem, or if not necessary at least expedient. For example, if
> one accidentally deletes a configuration file, one of the faster ways to
> get the original configuration file shipped with the package back is to
> purge and reinstall the package. It saves unpacking the package
> somewhere and manually copying out the configuration file. If purging
> the package deletes databases, this removes that tactic as an option.
Having a working backup+restore in place is probably a way better tactic :-) I
don't see how such a "workaround" should justify keeping cruft on millions of
properly administrated systems.
> * The data is not created by the package, in the sense that it's not
> created automatically by package installation. It's created by the
> user's use of the package and is the user's data. It's not clear that
> the mysql-server package, for instance, owns all the data in the default
> database location and has the right to be purging it.
Basically see my answers to previous two arguments. IMHO purging should do
what it's designed to do. If a package has data worth saving, IMHO one
shouldnt use purge or use a backup.
regards,
Holger
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