[Pkg-mediawiki-devel] Bug#698438: mediawiki-extensions old purge harmful for new packages

[Josip Rodin]

Package: mediawiki-extensions
Version: 1.4

Hi,

This old package has a postrm that does
rm -rf /etc/mediawiki-extensions
on purge. While this might have seemed like a good idea at the time,
nowadays when the package is split into 

Depends: mediawiki-extensions-base, mediawiki-extensions-geshi, mediawiki-extensions-ldapauth, mediawiki-extensions-openid, mediawiki-extensions-confirmedit, mediawiki-extensions-fckeditor, mediawiki-extensions-collection, mediawiki-extensions-graphviz

this causes data loss if you switch to using the new packages without
installing the new package[1], and then purge the useless old package without
reading the postrm.

Please have one of the new packages, likely mediawiki-extensions-base,
get rid of the old file:

aa21aaba44c96d8af67c86e89f61c35a /var/lib/dpkg/info/mediawiki-extensions.postrm

TIA.

[1] ...I know it's normally reasonable to expect people to upgrade from old
packages to new ones, thereby probably avoiding the problem, but I somehow
doubt there are few cases where people saw:

% sudo apt-get install mediawiki-extensions
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  defoma fckeditor file fontconfig fontconfig-config graphviz libcairo2
  libcdt4 libcgraph5 libdatrie1 libfontconfig1 libgd2-noxpm libgraph4 libgvc5
  libgvpr1 libice6 libjpeg62 libjs-jquery-ui liblcms1 libpango1.0-0
  libpango1.0-common libpathplan4 libpixman-1-0 libpng12-0 libsm6 libthai-data
  libthai0 libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxaw7 libxcb-render-util0
  libxcb-render0 libxcb1 libxdmcp6 libxdot4 libxext6 libxft2 libxmu6 libxpm4
  libxrender1 libxt6 mediawiki-extensions-collection
  mediawiki-extensions-confirmedit mediawiki-extensions-fckeditor
  mediawiki-extensions-geshi mediawiki-extensions-graphviz
  mediawiki-extensions-ldapauth mediawiki-extensions-openid php-geshi
  php5-ldap python-imaging ttf-dejavu-core x11-common
Suggested packages:
  defoma-doc psfontmgr x-ttcidfont-conf dfontmgr gsfonts graphviz-doc
  libgd-tools libjs-jquery-ui-docs liblcms-utils ttf-japanese-gothic
  ttf-japanese-mincho ttf-thryomanes ttf-baekmuk ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp
  ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp ttf-arphic-gkai00mp ttf-arphic-bkai00mp
  python-imaging-doc python-imaging-dbg
Recommended packages:
  libfont-freetype-perl aspell ttf-liberation javascript-common mediawiki-math
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  defoma fckeditor file fontconfig fontconfig-config graphviz libcairo2
  libcdt4 libcgraph5 libdatrie1 libfontconfig1 libgd2-noxpm libgraph4 libgvc5
  libgvpr1 libice6 libjpeg62 libjs-jquery-ui liblcms1 libpango1.0-0
  libpango1.0-common libpathplan4 libpixman-1-0 libpng12-0 libsm6 libthai-data
  libthai0 libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxaw7 libxcb-render-util0
  libxcb-render0 libxcb1 libxdmcp6 libxdot4 libxext6 libxft2 libxmu6 libxpm4
  libxrender1 libxt6 mediawiki-extensions mediawiki-extensions-collection
  mediawiki-extensions-confirmedit mediawiki-extensions-fckeditor
  mediawiki-extensions-geshi mediawiki-extensions-graphviz
  mediawiki-extensions-ldapauth mediawiki-extensions-openid php-geshi
  php5-ldap python-imaging ttf-dejavu-core x11-common
0 upgraded, 55 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 11,4 MB of archives.
After this operation, 36,6 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

...vomited^W and skipped that in favor of a less invasive upgrade, picking
only some of those.

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.