Guidelines for %config and %config(noreplace)

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 5/23/05, John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com> wrote:
> 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

What if the config file format has changed to the extent that the
packager knows that old config files are no longer valid and by using
the old config file format the application or service fails to start
at all?  Don't you need to replace the old configs, regardless of
modified state? Isn't situations like this one of the reasons why
rpmsave files are an option packagers have?

> 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.

No no no... there are many system-config-* gui tools that novice
admins and hobbiests are relying on. I find the assumption that the
bulk of fedora's userbase are experienced admins who know about the
rpmnew/rpmsave feature errenous. The system-config-* tools in the
distro hide the details of the config file locations and many novice
hobbiests who install fedora have absolutely no clue about the
rpmnew/rpmsave feature of rpm. yum nor up2date for example make no
attempt to notify about when these files are created, nor is their
existence testable via rpm queries or reporting facilities. The only
way you know about these files is by filesystem indexing or searching.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=158575

You could argue that rhel admins tend to be experienced enough to know
about this sort of thing..but they do so because they've learned it
from other means..like training classes..or documentation...and not
from information given to them as part of tool interaction when using
the system.   And if there is one truth that I hold dear its this, a
large chunk of the fedora userbase don't go out of their way to read
documentation unless forced to.  And in the case of rpmnew/rpmsave
specifically, i'm not even sure there is in distro documentation like
a manpage or infopage that describes this feature at all.

-jef