policy and policy-source confusion

[Thomas Molina]

On Wed, 12 May 2004, Leonard den Ottolander wrote:

> Hello Thomas,
> 
> > OK, so now I am confused again.  I moved all the rpmnew files to /tmp and 
> > did an rpm -V policy.  I got the following:
> 
> The problem is that policy and policy-sources somewhat conflict. In case
> both are installed the policy files will be added as .rpmnew, and the
> policies are recreated from policy-sources. These recreated policies
> should be identical in function with those from policy, but don't
> necessarily have the same checksum. (Not sure what happens on an update
> of policy-sources when you edited them, I guess policy-sources will then
> be installed as .rpmnew as well).

"somewhat conflict"?  What is that supposed to mean?  From my point of 
view, the current situation violates standard practice and the intent of 
the rpm system.  Actual practice doesn't match the docs either.  The FAQ 
says: 

"Installing or updating the policy  package loads the new policy 
after it installs the files. Similarly, installing or updating the 
policy-sources package rebuilds the policy.<version>  file as well as the 
file_contexts  file, then loads them as the currently effective policy."

So if I have both policy and policy-sources, and update both the 
policy.version file gets rebuilt/installed twice?  That can't be right.

If the rpmnew files should just be deleted, they shouldn't even be created 
in the first place.  In this case the policy package validates with the 
wrong set of files in place.

In my opinion installing/updating one package shouldn't modify files 
belonging to another package.  If policy-source is going to do this it 
should be a specific action by the user post-installation, not a part of 
the installation process itself.