Package: debhelper Version: 9.20140817 Priority: normal Dear Maintainer,
Please. add the handling of systemd service files as conffiles by default. Rationale: Common init systems, such as sysvinit, insserv, upstart etc. all store their service init files under the /etc directory. Currently all package files stored in /etc are considered conffiles, so they are not dumbly overwritten on the package updates. Sometimes administrators are required to modify service files (in /etc/init.d, /etc/init or options in /etc/default), forcing service to use custom config files, custom data dirs etc. and these changes are preserved. systemd itself brokes this practice, it stores its service files in the /lib/systemd/system/ directory, so the idea of keeping modified service files during the package update is not applied to it. As an example of the problem one can look at transmission-daemon package. Transmission has a config parameter forcing it to start at custom user privileges. Earlier it could be configured in /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json. In systemd this parameter is ignored because systemd service parameter "User" is used. One has to change the value in /lib/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service, if they wants to use custom user, and that value would be overwritten when a new version is installed. Obviously the issue in this very case can easily be solved in the transmission-daemon package itself, but I suppose that the common solution has to be involved, and all systemd service files to be treated as conffiles. May be all the files under /lib/systemd/system/ have to be marked as conffiles by default, or there is some special dh_systemd helper to be introduced. Thanks Best wishes and have a nice day, Vsevolod Velichko
