#1098513 mini-dinstall displays deprecated message irrelevant to user

Package:
mini-dinstall
Source:
mini-dinstall
Submitter:
Morten Kjeldgaard
Date:
2025-07-17 15:35:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#1098513#5
Date:
2025-02-21 18:05:43 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

When running mini-dinstall version 0.7.3, the program writes out a couple of messages saying:

  'chown_changes_files' is deprecated, please use 'restrict_changes_files' instead

This is a actually message for the developer, since there is nothing the user can do to prevent it from appearing.

I looked in the code for mini-dinstall, but I am not able to understand what's going on. The deprecated dict entry 'chown_changes_files' is defined in line 404 of mini-dinstall. The deprecated message comes from line 457, that says:

  if distributions[dist]['chown_changes_files'] is not None:
     ...

However that variable never gets the value None. It has the value False, and so the execution proceeds inside the if clause.

A bit further down we have the code:

  if distributions[dist]['restrict_changes_files'] is None:
     distributions[dist]['restrict_changes_files'] =  distributions[dist]['chown_changes_files']

where apparently the newer option restrict_changes_files is set equal to the older one if it is defined. Only this code is also not executed since the value of distributions[dist]['chown_changes_files'] is False and not None.

I don't understand what the code is doing. If it comes from a set user option, the error should tell the user to change it in the config file, but if the user should not be alerted if the user has not set any chown_changes_files option.

I discovered another bug in the code, a forgotten .getName() -> .name change, I have submitted a Pull Request on salsa for that one.

Cheers,
Morten

#1098513#10
Date:
2025-07-17 15:28:10 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Morten,

Am Fri, Feb 21, 2025 at 07:05:43PM +0100 schrieb Morten Kjeldgaard:

with mini-dinstall version 0.7.0, unit193 renamed the config option
chown_changes_files to restrict_changes_files. The reason for this is
Bug 821960 (see [1]). He put some information in the NEWS file, with
will be displayed (and mailed) when upgrade to version 0.7.0 via apt. So
it's not a bug and the user should update its configuration.

Thanks for this! I'll push it later today or tomorrow into our salsa git
repository.

Cheers,
Christoph

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=821960