Re: Policy documentation on debconf
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Dec 2005 17:41:00 +0100, Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> said:
>
>> And I thought I could rely upon dpkg from the next upload to call
>> the configure script with the same arguments as it did before, just
>> as I can rely on the same for preinst, postinst etc.
>
> Not more than what policy already guarantees. All you really
> need to do in config scripts is follow the protocol defined; how you
> do it is up to you.
The information which arguments are passed to the configure script is
missing AFAICT. I've got the impression that this is quite stable,
too.
>> We're not talking about the debconf interface at all here, AFAIS.
>> We're talking about the interface that dpkg provides to packages for
>> there debconf questions, i.e. the way the configure script is
>> called, and when.
>
> And you think this is not adequately covered in policy?
> ,----
> | Packages which use the Debian Configuration management specification
> | may contain an additional `config' script and a `templates' file in
> | their control archive[2]. The `config' script might be run before the
> | `preinst' script, and before the package is unpacked or any of its
> | dependencies or pre-dependencies are satisfied. Therefore it must
> | work using only the tools present in _essential_ packages.[3]
> `----
Additionally to the missing arguments, I think there should be some
references to the config script in chapter 6, "Package maintainer
scripts and installation procedure".
>> Do you imply we should not rely on the time point when dpkg calls
>> the configure script, or on the arguments it passes to it? Why?
>
> I think you really need to go read policy again.
You got me here - in fact I missed or forgot that it was mentioned in
3.9.1, because 6 is the usual place where my questions related to
maintainer scripts are answered. Reading again, it seems to me that
3.9.1, together with the first 3 paragraphs of 3.9, could well be moved
to 6, maybe close to 6.3. After that, the rest of 3.9 could be renamed
to something like "peaceful coexistence of packages"...
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer
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