Guidelines for %config and %config(noreplace)

[Tomas Mraz]

On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 13:59 -0400, John Dennis wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 19:37 +0200, Tomas Mraz wrote:
> > Are there any guidelines when to use %config and when %config
> > (noreplace)?
> > If you look at this bug report:
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=158568
> > 
> > Currently in FC-3 the ca-bundle.pem file is not %config at all. This is
> > obviously wrong because if sysadmin changes this file (and it's
> > legitimate to do so) he will lose his changes after openssl update.
> > 
> > However it's questionable if it should be %config(noreplace) because
> > then he will not get the changes (new CA certificates) on update.
> 
> I believe the way to think about this is by asking the question, "Did
> the sysadmin change the file?" If they did then rpm shouldn't overwrite
> his/her explicition modification. If the config file was unaltered then
> rpm should install the latest version of the file thus getting the
> updates. This is precisely the behavior of config noreplace, which I
> believe in this instance is probably the optimal behavior.
> 
> If a sys admin has altered a config file they are probably aware of the
> possble existence of a .rpmnew file and are aware of its implications.

Generally I would agree, the question is if the ca-bundle.pem is or
isn't normal config file or if it's a little bit special in this regard.

But I'm inclined to make it %config(noreplace).

-- 
Tomas Mraz <tmraz at redhat.com>