Preservation of system state considered harmful

[Sean Perry]

Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Sean Perry (shaleh@speakeasy.net):
> 
> 
>>it is asked by dpkg and has nothing to do with debconf.
> 
> 
> "man 7 debconf-devel" seems to agree with my recollection that it has a
> lot to do with debconf.  Am I badly misreading, or does debconf store
> and replay "config scripts" for previously-given answers to "any questions
> necessary to configure the package"?
> 

you are not wrong. However we are talking about different things.

If you edit a file marked by a package as a conffile your edits are 
guaranteed by dpkg to be safe. When a new version of the package is 
installed dpkg uses md5sum to see if a conffile has changed. If the file 
has indeed changed you get the console question "Y/N/D/Z" you have 
surely seen before. This is 100% handled by dpkg and has nothing to do 
with debconf.

Now it seems like the php file is not a conffile because debconf is used 
to ask some questions and then generate the file. So if you hand edit 
it, then re-run debconf your edits likely disappear.