Re: base-config/00dbootstrap_settings failure

[Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>]

Matt Kraai wrote:
> Argh.  This is my fault.  When I added support for preserving the
> suite information, I didn't think to update the different
> possibilities for apt-get/distribution.  As a temporary
> workaround, you can manually edit /target/root/dbootstrap_settings
> to set SUITE to unstable instead of sid.
> 
> I guess the correct solution is to make dbootstrap write unstable
> instead of sid, but I don't know how to handle slink and potato.
> Suggestions?

Actually, the error message is because debconf doesn't know about the
question named apt-setup/distribution, since apt-setup hasn't run yet. My
oversight; uploading a fix now.

Aside:

  Debconf doesn't really care if you set the value of a question of type
  select, like apt-setup/distribution, to a value that is not in the
  Choices list (this is arguably a bug..). It will just return that value
  when asked, and if it displays the question, there will be no default
  (or it will pick one arbitrarily).

So no, the mismatch between the names dbootstrap uses and the names
apt-setup uses won't cause any crashes, but they are a problem. I don't
quite understand the logic behind why dbootstrap is so keen on dragging
the release name into the picture.

Back when I had apt-setup prompt for release code names, I found that it
was a maintainance nightmare, especially when a relase happened and all
my descriptions of what potato and slink were became invalid.. Is there
any reason why dbootstrap can't just prompt for stable/testing/unstable
much as apt-setup does?

Of course, one reason is that debootstrap refuses to make a chroot
except by release code name. I don't really understand Aj's reasoning
behind that either.

-- 
see shy jo