cdebconf, missing bits

[Regis Boudin <regis@boudin.name>]

Hi everyone,

Time to review what's needed/missing for cdebconf, either in cdebconf
itself, or other packages to make it fully usable.

One currently missing bit is the handling of triggers in
dpkg-reconfigure, which I'm currently working on.

A big problem raised recently is #666530, highlighting the difference in
handling flags by debconf and cdebconf. The former can accept any word
(cups uses "changed"), the later only a list of predefined ones. I would
normally go for modifying cdebconf ; but it means modifying the API ,
and probably ABI, of libcdebconf.so, leading to a bit of a nightmare for
cdebconf-{entropy,termninal}, which would have to be in sync. Any
thoughts on the best way to go ?
For now, I modified it to return false instead of an error when an
unknown flag is asked so it doesn't prevent from installing. I'll
probably add a warning message as well.

One thing I noticed as well, is that in the current state, running
debconf after installing cdebconf makes the 2 databases out of sync. The
reason is that debconf, when it saves to a database, copies the old
file, and writes a new one, with an obvious problem when the file is a
symlink. The best I believe would be, if the file is actually a symlink,
to follow it. I would offer a patch, but I'm really useless at perl.
Unless someone has a better idea, obviously...

I believe with those fixed, it will actually be fully usable, which is
my target for wheezy; hopefully switching the default for wheezy+1.

Any other thoughts ?

Thanks,
Regis