bug#52539: Fwd: Comments in /etc/passwd don't get updated

[Jacob First]

Thanks for the explanation. This rationale sounds reasonable to me. If
someone with proper permission has modified a user account's comment,
it could be important to preserve that customization.

As I pointed out in an earlier message, I believe this behavior
contradicts the documentation of the `user-account' data type pretty
strongly. So it appears there is at least a "doc bug" here.

FWIW, I actually reported the present behavior as a bug not because of
the doc issue, but based on an assumption that "purely declarative"
implied the result of applying a given configuration should not depend
on any preexisting system state like a user comment. Sorry for not
making that clear: it seemed obvious, but I think it's actually a
misconception (even if user accounts are one of the few areas, AFAICT,
where the property doesn't hold true).

On Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 10:36 PM Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Jacob First <jacob.first@member.fsf.org> skribis:
>
> > After I apply this configuration with `guix system reconfigure', I
> > expect /etc/passwd to have been updated with "New Comment" in place of
> > "Old Comment". However, "Old Comment" remains.
>
> This is on purpose, per these lines in ‘allocate-passwd’ in (gnu build
> accounts):
>
>            (real-name (if previous
>                           (password-entry-real-name previous)
>                           real-name))
>
> This wasn’t a firm decision, but I think the rationale here could be
> that we’d rather allow users to change their name with ‘chfn’ to
> something other than what the sysadmin chose, than enforce the
> sysadmin’s choice.  (Except that ‘chfn’ is currently not setuid by
> default on Guix System, so the scenario above is unlikely.)
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.