TurnKey Linux's take on Ubuntu appliance development: KISS

[Evan Broder]

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 1:32 AM, Steve Langasek
<steve.langasek at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 07, 2010 at 02:19:34PM -0600, Evan Broder wrote:
>> i.e. if you're configuring /etc/nsswitch.conf, a package using
>> config-package-dev will install an /etc/nsswitch.conf.debathena file,
>> divert the original /etc/nsswitch.conf to
>> /etc/nsswitch.conf.debathena-orig in its postinst, and symlink
>> /etc/nsswitch.conf -> /etc/nsswitch.conf.debathena.
>
> And this doesn't cause any prompts or overwritten configs on upgrade?
>
> I'm pleasantly surprised if this is true.  There was a long known
> incompatibility between dpkg's conffile handling and its diversion handling,
> which is even codified in Debian/Ubuntu Policy (section 10.7.4).

I suspect you're referring to Debian bug #476899, which we reported
and got fixed a while back.

Hmm...I thought there was another dpkg bug as well, but I can't recall
what it is.

In any case, we've run into occasional issues with packages that
divert diversions (trust me - you don't want to know) triggering a
dpkg prompt on upgrades, and a couple of issues with package postinsts
that parse in a file and scribble back over it, undoing the symlink,
but past that it works great.

- Evan