[RFC] opkg conffiles force overwrite

[RFC] opkg conffiles force overwrite

[Tick]

Hi All,
  I am pondering that let conf->force_overwrite in opkg enable
resolve_conffiles overwrite any conffiles. Now opkg will not overwrite
the conffiles even if you set force_overwrite. It will cause opkg ask
user to choose what to do to the conffiles if they are changed.

Adding another flag e.g. force_overwrite_conffile seems a little bit
superfluous and not orthogonal to force_overwrite. But it will not
change current opkg behavior.

Letting force_overwrite can overwrite conffiles will cause logical
change of this flag.  This will make opkg-cl asking nothing when
upgrade some conffiles if you set force_overwrite. It may cause users
lose their own setting without a second chance to save them?

In my own opinion, I prefer let force_overwrite flag can overwrite
files including conffiles, because it has to be set manually. But this
will change the behaviour of opkg, and may have some impact on other
projects. Such as OE. That makes me consider again and again.

My proposal is if conffiles been overwrited because force_overwrite
was set.
The old conffile XXXX will be move to XXXX~, and adding a warning
message of "overwriting conffile XXXX".
Is that a good solution?

any advice?

p.s. please reply to opkg-devel@googlegroups.com.

Cheers,
Tick

Re: [RFC] opkg conffiles force overwrite

[Koen Kooi]

On 03-04-09 05:59, Tick wrote:
> Hi All,
>    I am pondering that let conf->force_overwrite in opkg enable
> resolve_conffiles overwrite any conffiles. Now opkg will not overwrite
> the conffiles even if you set force_overwrite. It will cause opkg ask
> user to choose what to do to the conffiles if they are changed.
>
> Adding another flag e.g. force_overwrite_conffile seems a little bit
> superfluous and not orthogonal to force_overwrite. But it will not
> change current opkg behavior.
>
> Letting force_overwrite can overwrite conffiles will cause logical
> change of this flag.  This will make opkg-cl asking nothing when
> upgrade some conffiles if you set force_overwrite. It may cause users
> lose their own setting without a second chance to save them?
>
> In my own opinion, I prefer let force_overwrite flag can overwrite
> files including conffiles, because it has to be set manually. But this
> will change the behaviour of opkg, and may have some impact on other
> projects. Such as OE. That makes me consider again and again.
>
> My proposal is if conffiles been overwrited because force_overwrite
> was set.
> The old conffile XXXX will be move to XXXX~, and adding a warning
> message of "overwriting conffile XXXX".
> Is that a good solution?

It's not a good solution since people use 'force-overwrite' to get 
around packages that don't (or can't) have RREPLACES set. If I do an 
opkg upgrade now, I don't want util-linux-ng-mount and busybox to start 
fighting over /etc/mountall, but I do want opkg to prompt me about fstab 
changes.

regards,

Koen

Re: [RFC] opkg conffiles force overwrite

[Angus Ainslie]

On Thu, 2009-04-02 at 20:59 -0700, Tick wrote:
> Adding another flag e.g. force_overwrite_conffile seems a little bit
> superfluous and not orthogonal to force_overwrite. But it will not
> change current opkg behavior.

There is currently a force-defaults switch so why not have a
force-maintainer or something similar. In OE specifically it would be
nice to be able to set this per recipe to try and guarantee a certain
config. The problem comes when 2 different recipes try to assert them
selves by using th force-maintainer flag.

Angus