Make debconf mandatory for prompting the user
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.5.8.0
Severity: wishlist
Your policy says:
<-- snip -->
...
2.3.9.1. Prompting in maintainer scripts
----------------------------------------
Package maintainer scripts may prompt the user if necessary.
Prompting may be accomplished by hand, or by communicating with a
program, such as `debconf', which conforms to the Debian Configuration
management specification, version 2 or higher.
...
<-- snip -->
I'm currently working on things like automated upgrading of many
(>> 100) computers. Debian already includes much infrastructure that
makes this task relatively cheap. For packages using debconf for
prompting the user it's easy to give the answers without pressing enter
on 100+ machines. It's a shame that most of the work is needed for
special casing the few packages not using debconf for prompting the
user.
I'm therefore suggesting that you change your policy to something like:
<-- snip -->
...
2.3.9.1. Prompting in maintainer scripts
----------------------------------------
Package maintainer scripts may prompt the user if necessary.
Prompting must be done through programs like `debconf' that
conform to the Debian Configuration management specification,
version 2 or higher.
...
<-- snip -->
There's one problem that will arise:
Essential packages prompting the user.
There are two possible solutions for this problem:
1. essential packages have to check whether debconf is available and if
yes have to use it
2. make debconf essential (it's already present on nearly every system
since many packages already depend on it; it should be possible to
remove the size of the debconf package by seperating separating
things like locales files away from the main package)
TIA
Adrian
BTW: Please Cc me on replies.
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
Reply to: