Subject: Re: Shouldn't go app-defaults in /etc/X11?

From: Christian Schwarz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 20:48:24 +0200 (MET DST)

Michael Alan Dorman <[email-masked]> writes:
> If you disagree with this, as many seem to, please propose a solution
> whereby package maintainers can easily make sure that app-defaults
> files are updated to reflect any changes introduced in the upstream
> app-defaults file.

Well, couldn't the files in app-defaults be marked as config files
("DEBIAN/conffiles") in the packages? Then dpkg creates checksums of these
files and when a package is updated, it can be replaced (if there were no
changes) or it can ask the user what he wants to do with it (replace,
leave under different name, i.e. add .dpkg-dist extension). 

I think all this is done automatically by dpkg now (at least in the
newest revision of dpkg). I've seen this working with a few other
packages, since I upgraded to "unstable" a few days ago.

Cheers,

Chris

--          _,,     Christian Schwarz
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---

From: Michael Alan Dorman <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Sep 1996 16:25:38 -0400

Christian Schwarz <[email-masked]> writes:
> ("DEBIAN/conffiles") in the packages?

Only if you want Ian Jackson to post a bug report against your
package---conffiles do not belong in /usr.

Please look at /usr/doc/X11/debian.README for the proper procedure for
making system-wide changes to application default values.

Mike.

---

From: "Brian C. White" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 16:10:12 -0400

> leave under different name, i.e. add .dpkg-dist extension).

The original point was that if these are editable at all, they shouldn't
be on a read-only filesystem (as /usr is allowed to be).

Personally, since these are _defaults_ that are intended to be overridden
by user configuration, I think they are fine where they are.  These
programs are not system utilities that need to be configured.  These
are just defaults and there are documented ways for a user to change
them as to their individual preferences.
                                             
                                          Brian
                                 ( [email-masked] )
                                             
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