Bug#537582: libxml-sax-machines-perl: XML::SAX::Machines::SiteConfig and upgrades

[Niko Tyni]

Package: libxml-sax-machines-perl
Version: 0.41-3
Severity: normal

Quoting the fine manual of XML::SAX::Machines:

 WARNING If you modify anything, modify only
 XML::SAX::Machines::SiteConfig.pm.  Don’t alter
 XML::SAX::Machines::ConfigDefaults.pm or you will lose your changes
 when you upgrade.

Unfortunately XML::SAX::Machines::SiteConfig.pm is shipped under 
/usr/share/perl5 in the package and is therefore not a configuration file.
This means it will be overwritten (or deleted) on upgrades.

I'm not sure if we can assume that the user is smart enough to place
a changed SiteConfig.pm under /etc/perl where the changes will not
be overwritten. If we can't, the severity of this bug should be 
upgraded to 'grave' due to the data loss implications.

We have seen two stable upgrades without any report of breakage, so
I suspect nobody actually needs to change the defaults. Therefore I'm
leaving this at 'normal' and I think improved documentation would be a
satisfactory fix for squeeze. Other opinions would be welcome.

In the 'grave' case, a fix could be to check the md5sum of an unchanged
SiteConfig.pm in a preinst script and copy it over to /etc/perl if
necessary (but obviously avoiding to overwrite anything in /etc/perl.)

The versions of the package in previous stable releases are only

 sarge => 0.41-2
 etch  => 0.41-2
 lenny => 0.41-3

so there's most probably just one md5sum to look for.
-- 
Niko Tyni   ntyni at debian.org