[cups.development] [RFE] STR #3344: Cups rewrites configuration files.

[Andrew McNabb]

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[STR New]

As a system administrator, I have been frustrated to find configuration
files, such as printers.conf and cups.conf, overwritten by CUPS. 
Furthermore, if one of these config files is a symlink, CUPS deletes the
symlink and creates a brand new file.

This behavior makes it very difficult to administer CUPS.  It is
impossible to check in config files into a version control system, and it
is hard to get CUPS to keep the same configuration across all machines on
a network.  I have seen various people complain about this behavior on
mailing lists, so I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been bitten by
this.

CUPS would be much easier to administer if it wrote temporary data to /var
(such as whether a printer is currently offline) instead of rewriting
printers.conf.  It would also be helpful if it followed symlinks when
making changes to config files, and if these changes only happened when
explicitly requested by the user (e.g., through the web interface).

Link: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L3344
Version:  -feature