Re: deb-cfmgr: Debian conffile prompting tool.
On 26 Mar 2000 11:33:53 -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
>
> Wichert is just asking that the frontend/program use debconf.
I'll try, but unless I'm missing something, the conffile replacement
questions don't seem to neatly map onto the debconf way of doing
things. (For example, how would a user ask to see a diff between new
and old conffiles?)
I'm not against debconf... I'd really like to not have to go and write
much interface code. It's just that I'm not sure if I can give an
interface that's comparable with what dpkg asks now while using a
debconf frontend.
(This shouldn't be read as disparaging of debconf... it's just that
the type of information it collects (persistant user information)
isn't the same as what deb-cfmgr needs (quick user interaction.))
> I'm totally against this whole thing mind you, unless dpkg retains
> someway of working without debconf, or an external program, as a
> fall back. I don't want a broken perl upgrade to kill my package
> system.
I quite agree... That's why I'd expect any patch that makes dpkg call
an external program be optional and off by default, unless a command
line option is give to dpkg. (Which is something that apt should be
able to do without many problems, and I'd expect most of this stuff to
be only useful during apt upgrades.) The old prompting code would be
left in dpkg, but it only would be called if the command line option
wasn't given or execution failed or returned an error. This way, we
can gain features without losing the standalone reliability that dpkg
already has.
Does this alleviate some of your concern?
--
Tom Rothamel --------- http://onegeek.org/~tom/ ------- Using GNU/Linux
Writing from home, just outside Northport, NY.
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (63% of Full).
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