Proposed guideline for init script files

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2007-02-28 at 16:48 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:29:15 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> 
> > > The same applies to all the programs, which are implemented in an
> > > interpreted language like Python. Do you want to mark all *.py files
> > > %config just because they may contain bugs?
> > 
> > Well, the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to like the idea
> > to consider rpm's default behavior to override any modified file as a
> > bug.
> 
> The bug is that somebody modifies installed non-config files without using
> the packaging system.
== You want users to package their customizations. Given the limitations
of rpm this means to rebuild the packages.

> It's called "to mess around in a system".
A matter of POV.

The point you seem to be missing is: I am talking about very few files,
admins might have customized, e.g.

* to work around bugs (I have stopped counting know how many times RH
has messed up my xorg.conf, my named.conf over all these years, and how
many times I have modified init-prios to work around this still unfixed
portmapper port allocation bugs)

* to add missing/experimental features.

* because they are developing on something.

* because they have 3rd party packages installed which might apply a
different sub-package splits.

* because traditional packaging of packages were designed to be modified
(e.g. site-wide app-defaults)

>  Admins, who do that, often
> forget what files they've changed, and "rpm -Va" only reports the changed
> checksum, not a diff.

Please, try that. With Fedora, the results of an rpm -Va is hardly
usable (alternatives, files outside of rpm control, missing dir
ownerships etc.).

> And what behaviour would you prefer during a dist-upgrade? That RPM
> refuses to install new binaries, because the user has replaced them with
> modified files?
Nope, I'd prefer an rpm that refuses to replace modified _files_ (Note:
files, not packages) and backs them up (similar to *.rpmsave or
*.rpmnew). Of cause such an rpm also would have to have a "--force" mode
to forcibly replace such files.

Ralf