Re: Bug#771496: overwrites user changes to configuration file /etc/dpkg-cross/cross-compile on upgrade (violates 10.7.3)

Neil Williams <[email protected]> Mon, 8 Dec 2014 18:39:07 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.embedded
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

tag 771496 - confirmed
severity 771496 minor
thanks

On Sun, 7 Dec 2014 15:22:08 +0100
gregor herrmann <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 15:28:39 +0000, Dimitri John Ledkov wrote:
> 
> > The user's configuration in this case comes from debconf prompt and
> > that choice is preserved upon upgrades, without additional prompts
> > and is safe w.r.t. to dpkg prompts.
> 
> Yes but it does it wrong.

There are no user-supported values in that file, it only stores debconf
information. Any change on dpkg-cross behaviour caused by that file is
a separate bug.

> The .config should read existing values from the file and feed them
> into debconf.

NO. Absolutely no. There are no supported values in that file other
than what is already in debconf. debconf must not be polluted by
arbitrary values.

> > /etc/dpkg-cross/cross-compile.sample on the other-hand is a conffile
> > and direct modifications to that file will be preserved and used to
> > generate /etc/dpkg-cross/cross-compile file.

That file should probably exist in /usr/share/ instead. That's a
different bug.

> > Thus you can edit the .sample file to add other things in that file
> > and they will be preserved across upgrades.
> 
> This is non-intuitive (why would I edit .sample to change the other
> one?) and more importantly it doesn't work because the postinst just
> replaces "#*default_arch".

Exactly. It is not supported.

dpkg-cross is essentially unmaintained and I'd rather it was orphaned -
it has been dead for some time and the only real purpose for having the
package after Jessie will be the /etc/dpkg-cross/cross-config.* files,
not cross-compile. Any package relying on /etc/dpkg-cross/cross-compile
for anything except the default arch already set in debconf is buggy.

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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