Bug#1220: CVS postinst message rather verbose

[Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com>]

I said:

> > Is it still necessary to ask in postinst for creating a CVS
> > repository? CVS 1.5 contains a standalone cvsinit program
> > (/usr/bin/cvsinit) which you can use at any time.
> >
> > I suggest to delete the cvsinit question in postinst.
>
> That sounds reasonable.  I'll do it, unless someone has an objection.

After looking at the postinst, I've had second thoughts.  I still
think the postinst prompt should go, but I'm not really sure how
much or how little the postinst ought to do.

We still haven't characterized our target debian users very well.
My sense of it is that a large proportion of users will have
systems which are essentially personal systems, where the debian
installer will be the primary system user -- perhaps the only
system user.

The cvs postinst does three things:

1.  Install the cvs info page.  This, of course, needs to be done.

2.  Displays an install-time blurb pointing to /usr/doc/cvs/contrib
    for some useful aids which are distributed with the cvs package,
    and which cvs users ought to look at and decide about adopting.

3.  Offers to install a CVS repository.

Keeping in mind the new debian installer who may have a personal-use
system, is it appropriate to display the blurb?  The blurb will be
helpful in this case, and somewhat (but less) helpful for an
installer who is probably more experienced and is installing debian
on a system with multiple users.

Keeping the same thing in mind, what about installing a CVS
repository?  I'm not personally a CVS user, but it strikes me
that this is only useful in the personal-user case.  I do
recall, however, that I spent some time with my nose in the
CVS manuals before I figured out that a CVS repository was
important and how to install one.

I see two ways to go here:

1.  Keep the blurb, eliminate the prompt about installing a cvs
    repository, and possibly add a one-liner to the blurb about
    using cvsinit to install a repository.  This would provide some
    helpful info to personal-use installers with minimal inconvenience
    to seasoned *nix installers installing multi-user system.

2.  Eliminate both the blurb, and the prompt.  Keep the contrib
    material in /usr/doc/cvs/contrib, but don't point users to it
    in a postinst blurb.

Does anyone have thoughts on this?

As a contrasting example, I've been struggling with the snmp package
lately because I need a testbed for some work related to snmp, and
I find that it's difficult to come to grips with for someone
without prior solid snmp grounding.  I even had to go to the source
package for some helpful info which I would have probably thought
about putting into /usr/doc/snmp.  Perhaps that's more like the
model we're aiming for, and I should presume prior solid cvs grounding
on the part of cvs package installers.