TurnKey Linux's take on Ubuntu appliance development: KISS

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 08:34:22AM -0500, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> The bit of Debian policy that keeps getting quoted about packages not 
> modifying conffiles of other packages is incomplete.  It goes on to say ... 
            ^^^^^^^^^
> except through defined interfaces.  There is nothing in Debian Policy that 
> prevents packages from being used for integration work.  It insists on 
> properly engineered work.

Terminology is being conflated here.  "Conffiles" != "config files";
"conffile" is the term used for a dpkg-managed config file shipped in the
binary package, and it is *never* ok for a package to edit such a file,
whether it's in the same package or in a different package, because it
*will* result in prompts that the user didn't ask for and won't know how to
resolve.

Config files that are not shipped as conffiles are another manner; there are
plenty of examples of these config files being managed by packages (in fact,
that's one of the main reasons to not ship them as conffiles).

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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