Guidelines for %config and %config(noreplace)

[John Dennis]

On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 19:37 +0200, Tomas Mraz wrote:
> Are there any guidelines when to use %config and when %config
> (noreplace)?
> If you look at this bug report:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=158568
> 
> Currently in FC-3 the ca-bundle.pem file is not %config at all. This is
> obviously wrong because if sysadmin changes this file (and it's
> legitimate to do so) he will lose his changes after openssl update.
> 
> However it's questionable if it should be %config(noreplace) because
> then he will not get the changes (new CA certificates) on update.

I believe the way to think about this is by asking the question, "Did
the sysadmin change the file?" If they did then rpm shouldn't overwrite
his/her explicition modification. If the config file was unaltered then
rpm should install the latest version of the file thus getting the
updates. This is precisely the behavior of config noreplace, which I
believe in this instance is probably the optimal behavior.

If a sys admin has altered a config file they are probably aware of the
possble existence of a .rpmnew file and are aware of its implications.

-- 
John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com>