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

[B. Watson]

On Mon, 9 May 2022, David Chmelik wrote:

> 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.

That actually *is* SBo policy. Any build that doesn't follow it, is
broken, and you should report the issue to the maintainer (or to the
mailing list).

>         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!

Hm, how long ago was that, what version of dropbear? The one we
currently have in the repo doesn't do this (I just checked).

>         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...

Can you tell us which font builds caused this problem? Email the
maintainers of those builds explaining the issue.

> Font configuration overwrite was also critically bad 
> for me, because I didn't know there was font configuration and couldn't

Removing the offending font packages didn't fix the problem? Also
after removal, run "fc-cache -f" as root (or just reboot; the boot
scripts run this for you).

>         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)...

slackpkg new-config offers the same options for all config
files. Including the option to diff the old & new files, which would
show you the comments in the replacement csh.login.

> sad that it appears it isn't the majority of builds that do this right, 
> on something as strictly Unix-like as Slackware!

Did you contact the maintainers of the builds you found that caused
problems? That's what they're there for...