Re: Some more debconf queries
On Thu, May 11, 2000 at 09:32:03AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> Let me give you some examples.
>
> Let's say that I would like to add a debconf front-end to my package
> listar, or to a package like postfix, or any of numerous packages that
> have configurtaion files. Now, in the debconf interface, I probably
> don't want to ask about all the options. In these two examples, I
> might ask about a domain name. For postfix, maybe ask whether or not
> there is a specific server to which all mail should be sent, or
> whether it should all be sent directly.
>
> In these cases, we are faced with either modifying the conffile
> directly or using a template. If a template is used, the user must
> run our own utility after editing the file -- not good.
Yeah, I'm aware of the meta-problem.
AFAIK, it doesn't have a neat solution short of requiring all packages
to use a consistent coherent configuration mechanism which has a
library interface, and interfacing debconf to that.
The kind of thing you might implement as a key-value Registry, for
example ;-)
Hopefully someone will now prove me wrong with a beautiful and elegant
solution, though..
Jules
[idling wondering how many lines of code and hours of debugging have
gone into the the programs in debian so that each can parse a
sufficiently general and in most cases bespoke configuration file
format]
--
Jules Bean | Any sufficiently advanced
jules@{debian.org,jellybean.co.uk} | technology is indistinguishable
jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk | from a perl script
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