Re: Debconf or not debconf
On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 07:52:10PM +1000, Herbert Xu wrote:
> Mark Brown <broonie@sirena.org.uk> wrote:
> > What makes you think that a debconf note is inappropriate for this? It
> > appears to be quite a common thing to do and seems helpful.
> Just because lots of people are doing it doesn't mean that it's good
> practice.
Equally well, it's really nasty to break the user system and not warn
them about it and there aren't many options for warning people. When
you're upgrading hundreds of packages or sometimes not restarting
programs for extended periods of time it can be hard to work out why
something's gone wrong later on when you finally notice the problem.
The first choice should, of course, be to avoid introducing changes that
cause problems but if you're forced to do it the least you can do is
tell users about it.
One of the things that Debian has been impressively good at is providing
smooth upgrades that don't bite you with nasty surprises. It would be
unfortunate to see that change.
> I for one am sick and tired of useless Debconf messages popping up
> during installation or being sent to me via email when I'm upgrading
> hundreds of machines automatically.
It would be useful for many of these notes if the support for central
configuration that was discussed when Debconf was designed were
implemented - part of the thing here is that the system still really
expects machines to get individual care and feeding.
Of course, this is a non trivial task and I'm not likely to work on it
myself.
--
"You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever."
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