On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 10:50:29AM -0400, Jim Penny wrote: > On Tue, 1 Jul 2003 20:40:02 -0500 Steve Langasek <vorlon@netexpress.net> wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 05:12:22PM +0200, Julien LEMOINE wrote: > > > I received a bug report on stunnel package from an user [1] that > > > complained > > > about the fact that I didn't warning about the new > > > /etc/default/stunnel file introduced in package (thereis a note in > > > README.Debian and in changelog). > > > Since debconf is not really appreciated for this use, what is > > > the best > > > solution ? Inform users with debconf or give them informations only > > > in changelog and README.Debian ? > > Does the introduction of /etc/default/stunnel break a large percentage > > of installed systems? If so, I would recommend looking for a way to > > provide a more graceful upgrade -- this is worth much more than a note > > telling users that you've just broken their systems... > It breaks 100% of stunnel installations. The old stunnel was command > line oriented, the current one is configuration file oriented. It would > be very difficult to write a converter. > I am going to disagree with most responders here. I think that in the > case that if upgrading a package introduces substantial risk of > breakage, a debconf message is quite appropriate. When a security > related package has high risk of breakage, it is urgent. > Now, this breakage happens to be somewhat benign, in that without > configuration, it does not function at all. But it is also somewhat > difficult to test for many uses. Further, when the unconfigured > system fails to start, the failure is completely silent. This adds > to the problems. My original argument stands: we should not be telling our users that we broke their system, because we shouldn't be breaking it in the first place. In this instance, it sounds to me like a bout of upstream bogosity has resulted in a rather grave regression in the quality of the software. Why would it ever be a good idea to *not* give users the ability to control the program using commandline options? -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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