On Sun, Feb 15, 2004 at 09:45:41PM +0000, Mark Brown wrote: > On Sun, Feb 15, 2004 at 12:25:09PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: > > On Sun, Feb 15, 2004 at 05:17:35PM +0000, Mark Brown wrote: > > > The first question is often asked in order to allow users who don't want > > > to use the Debconf configuration to avoid having to sit through reams of > > > configuration which will only be ignored anyway. That strikes me as > > > being useful. > > If there are configuration settings that warrant a high-priority debconf > > question (meaning there is no reasonable default value), why would you > > want to skip it when configuring the package? > If, for example, the next thing that happens after the package is > installed is that the configuration gets blown away with one that was > prepared earlier. So, er, just hit enter a couple of times? There should not be so many options without reasonable defaults that this is prohibitive in the case where the config will just be overwritten. Assuming no bugs, it should even be possible to pre-load your custom config file, and have the debconf questions just be a confirmation of the existing settings. This doesn't persuade me that asking users whether they want to have a broken config file installed for them is a good thing. > > The real reason for this question appearing in most packages where it > > does is that it paints over a real bug in the package's re-parsing of > > the config, resulting in a loss of local config changes (the "debconf is > > not a registry" bug), which is not acceptable; and without this > > underlying bug, the added question is not useful. > This really does depend on the package - there are (or at least have > been) packages that do a bit more than the bare minimum configuration > via Debconf. It is these packages that can benefit from an 'are you > interested?' question. The "bare minimum configuration" is all that should appear if you're running debconf at high priority. If it doesn't, that's a bug of its own that should be addressed. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature