dpkg-maintscript-helper(1) dpkg suite dpkg-maintscript-helper(1)NAMEdpkg-maintscript-helper - works around known dpkg limitations in main‐
tainer scripts
SYNOPSISdpkg-maintscript-helper command [parameter...] -- maint-script-parame‐
ter...
COMMANDS AND PARAMETERS
rm_conffile conffile [prior-version [package]]
mv_conffile old-conffile new-conffile [prior-version [package]]
DESCRIPTION
This program is designed to be run within maintainer scripts to achieve
some tasks that dpkg can't (yet) handle natively either because of
design decisions or due to current limitations.
Many of those tasks require coordinated actions from several maintainer
scripts (preinst, postinst, prerm, postrm). To avoid mistakes the same
call simply needs to be put in all scripts and the program will auto‐
matically adapt its behaviour based on the environment variable
DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_NAME and on the maintainer scripts arguments that you
have to forward after a double dash.
CONFFILE RELATED TASKS
When upgrading a package, dpkg will not automatically remove a conffile
(a configuration file for which dpkg should preserve user changes) if
it is not present in the newer version. There are two principal reasons
for this; the first is that the conffile could've been dropped by acci‐
dent and the next version could restore it, users wouldn't want their
changes thrown away. The second is to allow packages to transition
files from a dpkg-maintained conffile to a file maintained by the pack‐
age's maintainer scripts, usually with a tool like debconf or ucf.
This means that if a package is intended to rename or remove a conf‐
file, it must explicitly do so and dpkg-maintscript-helper can be used
to implement graceful deletion and moving of conffiles within main‐
tainer scripts.
REMOVING A CONFFILE
If a conffile is completely removed, it should be removed from disk,
unless the user has modified it. If there are local modifications, they
should be preserved. If the package upgrades aborts, the newly obsolete
conffile should not disappear.
All of this is implemented by putting the following shell snippet in
the preinst, postinst and postrm maintainer scripts:
dpkg-maintscript-helper rm_conffile \
conffile prior-version package -- "$@"
conffile is the filename of the conffile to remove.
prior-version defines the latest version of the package whose upgrade
should trigger the removal. It is important to calculate prior-version
correctly so that conffiles are correctly removed even if the user
rebuilt the package with a local version. For example, for a conffile
removed in version 2.0-1 of a package, prior-version should be set to
2.0-1~. This will cause the conffile to be removed even if the user
rebuilt the previous version 1.0-1 as 1.0-1local1.
If the conffile has not been shipped for several versions, and you are
now modifying the maintainer scripts to clean up the obsolete file,
prior-version should be based on the version of the package that you
are now preparing, not the first version of the package that lacked the
conffile.
package is the package name. If empty or omitted, the
DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_PACKAGE environment variable (as set by dpkg) will be
used.
All the parameters of the maintainer scripts have to be forwarded to
the program after "--".
Current implementation: in the preinst, it checks if the conffile was
modified and renames it either to conffile.dpkg-remove (if not modi‐
fied) or to conffile.dpkg-backup (if modified). In the postinst, the
latter file is renamed to conffile.dpkg-bak and kept for reference as
it contains user modifications but the former will be removed. If the
package upgrade aborts, the postrm reinstalls the original conffile.
During purge, the postrm will also delete the .dpkg-bak file kept up to
now.
RENAMING A CONFFILE
If a conffile is moved from one location to another, you need to make
sure you move across any changes the user has made. This may seem a
simple change to the preinst script at first, however that will result
in the user being prompted by dpkg to approve the conffile edits even
though they are not responsible of them.
Graceful renaming can be implemented by putting the following shell
snippet in the preinst, postinst and postrm maintainer scripts:
dpkg-maintscript-helper mv_conffile \
old-conffile new-conffile prior-version package -- "$@"
old-conffile and new-conffile are the old and new name of the conffile
to rename.
prior-version defines the latest version of the package whose upgrade
should trigger the rename of the conffile (see the notes for rm_conf‐
file above concerning the correct value). If prior-version is empty or
omitted, then the operation is tried on every upgrade (note: it's safer
to give the version and have the operation tried only once).
package is the package name. If empty or omitted, the
DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_PACKAGE environment variable (as set by dpkg) will be
used.
All the parameters of the maintainer scripts have to be forwarded to
the program after "--".
Current implementation: the preinst checks if the conffile has been
modified, if yes it's left on place otherwise it's renamed to old-conf‐
file.dpkg-remove. On configuration, the postinst removes old-conf‐
file.dpkg-remove and renames old-conffile to new-conffile if old-conf‐
file is still available. On abort-upgrade/abort-install, the postrm
renames old-conffile.dpkg-remove back to old-conffile if required.
INTEGRATION IN PACKAGES
Given that dpkg-maintscript-helper is used in the preinst, using it
unconditionally requires a pre-dependency to ensure that the required
version of dpkg has been unpacked before. The required version depends
on the command used, for rm_conffile and mv_conffile it is 1.15.7.2:
Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.15.7.2)
But in many cases the operation done by the program is not critical for
the package, and instead of using a pre-dependency we can call the pro‐
gram only if we know that the required command is supported by the cur‐
rently installed dpkg:
if dpkg-maintscript-helper supports command; then
dpkg-maintscript-helper command ...
fi
Debian Project 2012-05-04 dpkg-maintscript-helper(1)
