[Pkg-sympa-devel] Bug#864546: sympa: shipped file missing after upgrade from jessie to stretch: /etc/sympa/sympa.conf-smime.in

[Stefan Hornburg (Racke)]

On 06/10/2017 02:02 PM, Andreas Beckmann wrote:
> Package: sympa
> Version: 6.2.16~dfsg-3
> Severity: serious
> User: debian-qa at lists.debian.org
> Usertags: piuparts
> 
> Hi,
> 
> during a test with piuparts I noticed your package modifies conffiles.
> This is forbidden by the policy, see
> https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#s-config-files
> 
> 10.7.3: "[...] The easy way to achieve this behavior is to make the
> configuration file a conffile. [...] This implies that the default
> version will be part of the package distribution, and must not be
> modified by the maintainer scripts during installation (or at any
> other time)."
> 
> Note that once a package ships a modified version of that conffile,
> dpkg will prompt the user for an action how to handle the upgrade of
> this modified conffile (that was not modified by the user).
> 
> Further in 10.7.3: "[...] must not ask unnecessary questions
> (particularly during upgrades) [...]"
> 
> If a configuration file is customized by a maintainer script after
> having asked some debconf questions, it may not be marked as a
> conffile. Instead a template could be installed in /usr/share and used
> by the postinst script to fill in the custom values and create (or
> update) the configuration file (preserving any user modifications!).
> This file must be removed during postrm purge.
> ucf(1) may help with these tasks.
> See also https://wiki.debian.org/DpkgConffileHandling
> 
> In https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/09/msg00412.html and
> followups it has been agreed that these bugs are to be filed with
> severity serious.
> 
> debsums reports modification of the following files,
> from the attached log (scroll to the bottom...):
> 
> 3m56.7s ERROR: FAIL: debsums reports modifications inside the chroot:
>   debsums: missing file /etc/sympa/sympa.conf-smime.in (from sympa package)
> 
> 
> If the conffile is actually obsolete, please use
>   dpkg-maintscript-helper rm_conffile
> to remove it properly (also from dpkg's database).
> 

This file looks like an artifact, so we are probably going to remove it.

Regards
           Racke

> 
> cheers,
> 
> Andreas
> 


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