Re: Clarification: Eliminate nagging at installation time?

[Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>]

Norbert Nemec wrote:
> IMO, packages should under no circumstances complain
> about anything if it is avoidable at all. No matter if there is a automatic
> configuration system or not. We should simply make it policy that a package
> should always install to some safe state without asking any questions at
> installation time. Now, if there is any configuration necessary before the
> package can be used, it should put a notice in a log file that is viewed
> automatically after all packages have been installed.

The configuration management proposal implies this. There are priorities
assigned to questions, and all questions have sensible defaults. If you
chose a high enough minimum priority, all questions will be skipped and the
defaults will be used.

For example:

joey@gumdrop:~/src/debconf>make test FRONTEND=Line PACKAGE=cvs
./test.pl Line samples/cvs.templates \
        samples/cvs.mappings samples/cvs.config
List the directories that are the roots of your repositories, separated by
spaces. 

These repositories can be exported by the pserver, have their history files
rotated automatically every week, and general repository security checks
will be performed on them. 

Where are your repositories? make: *** [test] Interrupt

joey@gumdrop:~/src/debconf>make test FRONTEND=Line PACKAGE=cvs \
	DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
./test.pl Line samples/cvs.templates \
        samples/cvs.mappings samples/cvs.config
Use of uninitialized value at ConfModule/Base.pm line 101, <GEN0> chunk 8.
Use of uninitialized value at ConfModule/Base.pm line 53, <GEN0> chunk 8.
Use of uninitialized value at ConfModule/Base.pm line 101, <GEN0> chunk 9.
Use of uninitialized value at ConfModule/Base.pm line 53, <GEN0> chunk 9.
joey@gumdrop:~/src/debconf>

(Ok, I have some perl -w warnings to clean up, but you get the idea. :-)

To address AJ's concerns, that will not be the default priority.

-- 
see shy jo