Bug#524239: Bug#524233: console-setup should conflict with console-data

[Kurt Roeckx <kurt@roeckx.be>]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 07:13:36AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> Quoting Anton Zinoviev (anton@lml.bas.bg):
> > merge 524233 524239
> > thanks
> > 
> > On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 07:14:34PM +0200, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> > > 
> > > console-setup and console-data both allow you to setup the
> > > keyboard layout but they do not take each other settings into
> > > account.
> > 
> > Why this should be considered a bug?  Normaly the users don't have to 
> > install both packages but perhaps there are many reasons why they might 
> > want to install them both.  Console-data and console-cyrillic have 
> > happily coexisted for a decade and now this can continue with 
> > console-setup (exept that it seems console-data and console-cyrillic are 
> > going to become obsolete).
> 
> 
> As the de facto maintainer of console-data, I agree with this. I have
> to add that I unfortunately am entirely unable to implement in c-d
> something to have it grab keymap definitions from
> console-setup. Moreover, as both use different origins for the keymaps
> (c-s uses X.org keymaps while c-d provides the old-style Linux console
> keymaps, crafted by generation of Linux users over years....turning
> into a giant mess), it is very likely that many keymaps do not
> necessarily correspond.
> 
> 
> I would be delighted to obsolete console-data, as many people
> know. There are however several steps to achieve before that happens
> (one of those being d-i uing console-setup).

Well, X now Depends on console-setup, so you're atleast going
to get more people install this.

> An I indeed have no idea about how to turn console-data into a
> completely obsolete package and then offer users a decent transition
> to console-setup....

I think there are a few things that console-setup doesn't do
that atleast console-tools does:
- calling setterm to set powersaving mode.
- Set keyboard rate
- Being able to set numlock on boot

I got a little confused about console-data being the package
that ask the debconf questions, but it seems that console-common
is actually the package that set up keyboard.  So you can argue
where the second bug belongs to.

I have no idea if console-setup does anything more than
console-common / console-data.

Anyway, my problem with the current situation is that there are 2
config files where I can set the same thing, and it's not obvious
which of the 2 is going to win.

In general, it would be better that there was only 1 source of
keyboard layouts.  And I have no problem going with those of X,
but I have no idea if the quality of both are the same or not.


Kurt