[Slackbuilds-users] policy request: don't alter/overwrite system files without consent!

[David Chmelik]

I request SBo policy is SlackBuilds don't alter/overwrite system 
files/symlinks without asking; providing alternatives is fine, but I've 
had many horrible experiences with this over years.
         A recent critical offender is dropbear SSH(D.)  I installed to 
try alternative SSH client then found it overwrites Slackware's sshd and 
I could no longer remotely connect (had to go there physically)--this is 
/extremely/ bad (README doesn't even warn you!: ) let user/sysadmin 
decide if they want to replace such things themselves (/after/ 
installing) or just try out!
         Another problem for years was several/many fonts, which got so 
bad I simply quit installing fonts from SBo but would like to again... 
what several do is overwrite system font configuration, then when I 
opened programs such as a text editor, default fonts had been replaced 
with ones that shrunk to unreadable size... again, let user/sysadmin 
decide if they want to replace such things themselves (/after/ 
installing) or just try out! (I doubt font READMEs said they'd replace 
defaults either.)  Font configuration overwrite was also critically bad 
for me, because I didn't know there was font configuration and couldn't 
find out what happened (even asking several experts) so thought 
Slackware broke, so I ended up doing an OS drive format (took a day w/dd 
on SSD, maybe before blkdiscard appeared) and fresh installation, losing 
part of a week of time... remember if someone installs a font, it 
usually doesn't mean they want to replace default system font 
configuration--give them instructions for that, sure, but don't make 
unwarranted assumptions that cause problems!
         Alternative csh is an example of few that may do this right: it 
offers alternative csh.login and it's made pretty clear (in the file, 
though I don't recall if slackpkg new-config just offers overwrite)... 
sad that it appears it isn't the majority of builds that do this right, 
on something as strictly Unix-like as Slackware!