on upgrade, keyboard config changed to use deadkeys

How thoroughly unhelpful of xkeyboard-config!

  http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/commit/?id=b611a52d87b0eb773f5d1e88e5fe3c22072bcf5b

I'm not sure how best to deal with this, as xkeyboard-config made the change but keyboard-configuration is responsible for configuration, so there's no particularly good version to look at on upgrade (and in any case maverick had console-setup but not keyboard-configuration, further complicating matters). Do you have any suggestions?

I guess xkb-data is the only package that really knows when this has changed. Perhaps a quick-n-dirty postinst hack there to sed /etc/default/keyboard and /etc/default/console-setup for the name change will suffice?

Ah, sorry for the mis-reassignment.

Looks like we'll need to fix this in xkb-data's postinst for upgrades.

Be careful about sedding /etc/default/keyboard; that information is also in debconf. /etc/default/keyboard is certainly *meant* to be canonical, so this approach ought to work, but desync here is a possible source of bugs so you should test multiple successive upgrades to make sure. Also be careful to edit both /etc/default/keyboard and /etc/default/console-setup, as keyboard configuration may be in one file or the other depending on maverick->natty (or lucid->p) upgrade order.

Is there any reason not to update both the debconf information and /etc/default/{console-setup,keyboard}? That seems like it should be fairly easy to do and would ensure desyncing doesn't happen.

I think that would be fine if you're careful, yes.

This bug was fixed in the package xkeyboard-config - 2.2.1-1ubuntu1

---------------
xkeyboard-config (2.2.1-1ubuntu1) oneiric; urgency=low

  * Merge from Debian experimental. Remaining Ubuntu changes:
      + xkb-data-i18n.install, xkb-data.install, rules: Split out
        xkb-data-i18n to be used by console-setup.
      + rules: Generate pot file for translations during build
      + 105_intelligent_keyboard.patch: Add support for the Intelligent
        Keyboard K04
  * debian/patches/108_taiwan.patch:
  * debian/patches/104_macbook_expose_and_dashboard.patch:
  * debian/patches/107_lao.patch:
    - Drop, included upstream
  * debian/xkb-data.postinst.in:
    - Migrate console-setup/keyboard-configuration settings from dvorak-intl
      to dvorak-alt-intl to match rename in xkeyboard-config 1.9. (LP: #742683)
  * debian/patches/108_fix_intltool_make_check.diff:
    - Fix make check in the presence of the quilt patch system.

xkeyboard-config (2.2.1-1) experimental; urgency=low

  * New upstream release:
    - Big rewrite for GNOME3.
  * By default, run-time dependencies are checked at build-time:
    - Pass --disable-runtime-deps to disable that check since there's no
      point in doing so for Debian packages.
    - Break earlier versions of libx11-6.
  * Get rid of old maintainer scripts to upgrade from 1.6 since squeeze
    has 1.8.
  * Refresh patches.
  * Switch to dh:
    - Bump debhelper build-dep/compat to 8.
    - Use dh-autoreconf.
    - Rewrite debian/rules accordingly.
    - Build out-of-tree.
  * Remove debian/xsfbs/, no longer needed.
  * Remove debian/patches/quiltrc, not really needed.

xkeyboard-config (2.1-2) unstable; urgency=low

  * Remove Mohammed Adnène Trojette from Uploaders. Thanks for your work!
  * Wrap build dependencies.
  * Drop Breaks on libx11-6 (<< 2:1.1), that was before lenny.
  * Bump Standards-Version to 3.9.1 (no changes needed).
  * Upload to unstable.
 -- Christopher James Halse Rogers <email address hidden> Tue, 24 May 2011 12:13:34 +1000