Dear Release Team, The SRU process description [1] mentions providing minimal fixes to solve issues but does not mention handling configuration file changes explicitly.
I found some cases where SRUs (for example for unattended-upgrades) listed new default values as comments in the main configuration file. Upon upgrade this changed configuration file may trigger a question to the system administrator to accept/merge the changes in case the configuration file on the system is modified locally. This question makes the upgrade a bit more slower and requires more attention. Also when unattended-upgrades detect locally modified configuration files it keeps back packages updating those configuration files from being automatically upgraded potentially leaving security issues not fixed. Stripping SRUs of configuration file changes which do not change the system's behavior OTOH can make the configuration files less informative by e.g not listing new configuration options of may be misleading if a configuration item's default is changed. Those inaccuracies would be fixed with each release upgrade when the packages are upgraded to a release which contain the original fixes which were SRUd. Even after considering the mentioned downsides I'd like to propose adopting the policy of stripping configuration file changes from the SRUs unless they are needed as part of the fix to be back-ported to make upgrades smoother. Cheers, Balint -- Balint Reczey Ubuntu & Debian Developer [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates -- Ubuntu-release mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-release
