[arch-general] pacman overwriting files (was Re: dcron 4.2)

[Dimitrios Apostolou]

On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, Aaron Griffin wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Dimitrios Apostolou <jimis at gmx.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Jan 2010, Aaron Griffin wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Am 13.01.2010 00:34, schrieb Dimitrios Apostolou:
>>>>>
>>>>> Since I've been bitten by this, how can I know if the file I modified is
>>>>> goint to be overwritten or not, *before* it actually happens? And even
>>>>> if it is, a .pacsave wouldn't hurt anyone, if I remember correctly (it's
>>>>> been some time) I had completely lost my changes, and I had to rewrite
>>>>> them.
>>>>
>>>> pacman -Qii is your friend.
>>>
>>> This.
>>> pacman -Qii dcron will show you all the backup files that pacman will
>>> take care of.
>>>
>>
>> Guys that thing bit me again: During the big libpng upgrade "initscripts"
>> package got upgraded too and /etc/rc.{sysinit,shutdown} got overwritten
>> without notifying me. Because of special changes I've made to mount /var as
>> tmpfs, and because I forgot to put the files in the NoUpgrade line of
>> pacman.conf, the system was unbootable and after fixing it pacman wants to
>> download 500MB of packages again (ideas?). :-@
>>
>> Can't pacman just emit a big fat warning like: WARNING: /etc/rc.sysinit USER
>> CHANGES OVERWRITTEN
>>
>> Since this case is extremely rare, the message would appear scarcely. I
>> can't thing of anything negative for such a feature.
>
> I can: extra work for people who are already taxed. You want it? Submit a patch.
>

OK I like that, from previous answers I thought it was a choice not to fix 
it. I will try to submit the patch.


Dimitris