Re: Debconf or not debconf : Conclusion

[Marc Singer <elf@buici.com>]

On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 01:11:48AM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> > On a separate but related topic, I think a much better approach would
> > be to handle configuration as a step entirely separate from the
> > install phase.  Let the install be entirely quiet, and let packages
> > have intelligent defaults.  If the package absolutely must be
> > configured before it can be used, then let it be non-functional until
> > someone actually calls dpkg-configure (which would be just like
> > dpkg-reconfigure except that's the only time the questions would be
> > asked).
> 
> Debconf is flexable enough so you can do that already (assuming all
> packages use debconf).
> 
> - comment out the dpkg-preconfigure call in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf
> - set in /etc/debconf.conf:
>     Frontend: noninteractive
>     Admin-Email:
> - dpkg-configure is the following script:
>     #!/bin/sh -e
>     dpkg-reconfigure --unseen-only --default-priority -freadline $@

My reading of Ted's comment is that this ought to be the *default*
policy.  I won't go so far as to say that RH made a better choice, but
I don't really see the benefit of the all of the warning messages when
once displayed they are nowhere to be found.  Perhaps, you'll have a
command for recovering these messages, but that doesn't change the
fact that they are just not really necessary at install time.