[maemo-developers] Residual configuration after package reinstallation

[From: Tomasz Rybak]

Hello.
After Saturday's testing marathon I was checking free space on my device
and found out that many of packages that I have installed to test
left configuration files after removal. 
I have used `dpkg -l | grep -v ^i` in terminal to find them.
There were many packages with status rc in the first column - 
which means that they were Removed with Configuration files
left. I have removed all such packages by `dpkg -P name`
but few question remain:

1. Configuration files do not take much space but when one is
experimenting and testing many programs there can be many such files 
left. Another possible problem is that such packages are kept
in database (on Debian in /var/lib/dpkg) where list of all package
files, configuration files, checksums, etc. Such files sizes can add
and take precious bits of rootfs.

2. I can imagine that someone install old version of package,
uninstalls it while documentation is left, then after some time
package gets more mature, the same person install new version which
has problems because of old configuration.

Another possibility is that old configuration has disabled some
functionality (e.g. it was not stable at the moment) and new version
keeps it disabled because of old residual config files.
I know that package maintainer should take configuration updates
into consideration but it might be hard - this week there was
problem with updated qtirreco losing configured remotes:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9601


So what is reason for HAM to leave configuration when uninstalling
packages (removing them but not purging)?

Regards

-- 
Tomasz Rybak <bogomips at post.pl> GPG/PGP key ID: 2AD5 9860
Fingerprint A481 824E 7DD3 9C0E C40A  488E C654 FB33 2AD5 9860
http://member.acm.org/~tomaszrybak
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