Re: Bug#176506: Make debconf mandatory for prompting the user

[Eduard Bloch <edi@gmx.de>]

#include <hallo.h>
* Henrique de Moraes Holschuh [Thu, Jan 16 2003, 09:29:22AM]:
> > every package not using debconf. At least I think that it should be ok
> > if the package respects DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive. I am no DD,
> > though.
> 
> It is, for the purposes of unattended installs, enough.  I *do* hate to be
> prompted for information at package install, though, and I hate even more
> when it is done by non-debconf methods that I cannot toss at a "don't ask me
> again and use this default" database common to all my machines.
> 
> So, IMHO, packages should not be prompting the user _ever_ at maintainer
> scripts, unless it is done through debconf.

Look, upgrades are a complicated problems to make the process work
non-interactively. It is not easy to handle changes in the conffiles using debconf-like
methods since conffiles are only compared when the package has been
extracted. Even if you wish to configure all conffiles in one run
without interruptions, it would require changes in dpkg. The conffiles
must either be detected before the packages are extracted or the
configuration of a such package must be postponed until everything is
extracted and configured. In the first case, we would need to have the
conffiles checksums in the static control fields, in the second case, it
would not work much better than it does now since other packages may
depend on the the particular package and so configguration of other
package must be postponed and be executed between the configuration of
conffiles.

Gruss/Regards,
Eduard.
-- 
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