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

[Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net>]

On 16-Jan-03, 16:49 (CST), Brian May <bam@debian.org> wrote: 
> One potential point of confusion (judging from other E-Mails), if
> debconf is made mandatory for prompting the user, does this mean
> packages cannot use conffiles anymore?

No. Packages that use conffiles *don't* prompt the user (at least with
respect to it's conffiles). (If they do, it's a policy violation.)

> I suspect that packages that use only conffiles and no maintainer
> scripts that ask for input can go unchanged, as the prompting would then
> be dpkg's fault. Am I right?

Yes. To clarify (I think!), the proposal is not that packages be
required to use debconf, but that packages be required to use debconf
when interacting with the user via maintainer scripts.

Dpkg's conffile handling/prompting is not in this scope.

Regards,
Steve

-- 
Steve Greenland

    The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
    system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
    world.       -- seen on the net