dpkg manpage is confusing about purpose of --configure

I believe that dpkg --configure will only configure packages that have not been configured, but the dpkg man page doesn't do the best job of explicitly stating that. I found another dpkg command dpkg-reconfigure that "reconfigures packages after they have already been installed." If you are trying to reconfigure mldonkey-server I believe you will want to use dpkg-reconfigure since it appears to already be installed on your system.

The problem isn't that the man page is unclear. The man page is wrong. It says that dpkg --configure will "Reconfigure an unpacked package".

But otherwise you are right. dpkg-reconfigure does the job fine.

I was looking at the man page again and noticed that in the beginning it says "unpacked" means "The package is unpacked, but not configured". However, the section which states "dpkg --configure package ... | -a | --pending . . . Reconfigure an unpacked package. If -a or --pending is given instead of package, all unpacked but unconfigured packages are configured" is misleading. In particular the sentence "Reconfigure an unpacked package", as you could not reconfigure something that has not been configured. I think changing "Reconfigure" to "Configure" would be clearer.

Yes, the manpage should be clarified.

I've sent a patch upstream; see the linked Debian bug. Sorry for the delay!

This bug was fixed in the package dpkg - 1.15.8.2ubuntu1

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dpkg (1.15.8.2ubuntu1) maverick; urgency=low

  * Resynchronise with Debian. Remaining changes:
    - Adjust versioned emacs22 conflicts to cope with versions in Ubuntu.
    - cputable: Set cpu to i686 for arch i386.

dpkg (1.15.8.2) unstable; urgency=low

  * Bump libdpkg-perl Depends on dpkg to 1.15.8, as it will break dpkg
    versions before that when installing and removing libdpkg-perl,
    because older update-alternatives and dpkg-divert require Dpkg.pm and
    Dpkg/Gettext.pm which will disappear due to the Replaces. Closes: #590867
    Thanks to Sven Joachim <email address hidden> for the analysis.
  * Allow specifying again absolute and relative paths for dpkg-buildpackage
    -r option. Closes: #591010

dpkg (1.15.8.1) unstable; urgency=low

  * Fix off-by-one error in update-alternatives that lead to an infinite loop
    while writing the administrative file. Closes: #590854

dpkg (1.15.8) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Raphaël Hertzog ]
  * Add new commands --before-build and --after-build to dpkg-source
    and modify dpkg-buildpackage to call them automatically at the
    start and at the end of the process. With "3.0 (quilt)" source packages
    this ensures patches are applied even in case of binary-only builds.
    Closes: #572526
  * Merge non-regression test for Ubuntu's specificities concerning
    changelog handling. Closes: #582389
  * Fix some copy-paste mistakes in dpkg-architecture(1). Thanks to Ian Fleming
    <email address hidden> for the patch and Colin Watson for forwarding out of
    Launchpad. Closes: #582404 LP: #564308
  * Clarify description of dpkg --configure in dpkg(1). Thanks to Colin Watson
    for the patch and to Robert Persson for the report.
    Closes: #582406 LP: #77287
  * Fix the non-regression test lib/dpkg/test/t-ar.c by not overflowing the
    size of ar_name. Thanks to Colin Watson for the report, analysis and patch.
    Closes: #582401
  * Modify Dpkg::Shlibs::Objdump to use the cross objdump binary when cross
    compiling. Thanks to Loïc Minier for the initial patch. Closes: #578365
  * Make dpkg-maintscript-helper more robust when required parameters are
    missing. Closes: #582814
  * Clarify that dpkg-maintscript-helper rm_conffile needs the last version of
    the package that did not remove the obsolete conffile if this was not
    implemented at the time the file became obsolete. Closes: #582893
  * Enhance dpkg-maintscript-helper rm_conffile and mv_conffile to work
    properly when <lastversion> is not given (or is empty). Closes: #582819
  * Small fix in dpkg-gensymbols' handling of tags. Closes: #583656
    Thanks to Michael Tautschnig <email address hidden> for the report and the fix.
  * update-alternatives has been rewritten in C, the only feature change
    should be that it uses its own logfile /var/log/alternatives.log (rotated
    like dpkg.log).
  * Implement new --unapply-patches option for dpkg-source with source formats
    2.0 and 3.0 (quilt) that unapplies the patches after a successful build.
    This option can be put in debian/source/local-options in the package VCS
    repository for instance.
  * Impl...