Bug#229648: reopened showold bug

[barbier@linuxfr.org (Denis Barbier)]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2004 at 06:33:18PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> Denis Barbier wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 23, 2004 at 02:06:57AM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> > > I've reopened this bug because the hack of making main-menu set showold
> > > when reconfiguring is not good enough. Sure, it works for reconfiguring.
> > > But if a menu item fails, or backs up to the menu, the package is left
> > > half-configured. In this case, when it's run again, main-menu does a
> > > udpkg --configure, and does not set showold first. So whatever you did
> > > wrong in answering that menu items's questions can't be undone, since it
> > > doesn't redisplay the questions to you. Potentially kinda bad..
> > > 
> > > Short-term, I think it would be better to back out the patch that closed
> > > this bug, the original behavior that prompted the bug is not as bad as
> > > this.
> > > 
> > > Brain-storming other ways to fix it..
> > 
> > For the record, there is also another way explained in #220868.
> 
> So I take it that Steinar's CLEARSEEN thing, which would also fix this,
> never happened. 

Yes, because nobody but me made comments, and I was reluctant to add
a new command unless it is really necessary.  But now I am not even sure
that this fixes the current problem.  For instance when a script dies
because of 'set -e', this command should be called.

> > > - Make cdebconf in d-i honor the seen flag if it's set -- but never set
> > >   it even when displaying questions. This would let database preseeders
> > >   do their thing, while letting us not worry about the status of the
> > >   seen flag at all. There could be a special cdebconf/mark_seen that is
> > >   forced to false in d-i.
> > 
> > Ok, sounds good, I'll commit a fix soon.
> 
> I do think this method is simpler..

Agreed, fix committed.

Denis