Deconf and shared questions
Hi,
Now that the focus is turning onto debconf'ing packages, I am
going to ask a question that has been plaguing me whenever I start
thinking about debconfing some of my packages.
I have at least two packages now (dist and mailagent) that can
use, and thus care about, the organization as recorded in
/etc/news/organization. (Note that neither is a NNTP client or server
or a MUA). A third, Gnus, also should use the value contained
therein.
I am sure there must be any number of news servers, NNTP
clients, etc, that also care for the value in /etc/new/organization,
and arrange for that file to be created, though I have no idea how
many there are, or which packages do so care.
At this point, in the postinst, the packages check to see if
/etc/news/organization exists, or, if not, ask the user and create
it.
Given that the check is done before asking any question in the
postinst, if you do install all three of the packages, the first one
whose postinst runs shall ask the question, and create the file;
subsequently, the other packages won't ask the question, since the
file /etc/news/organization shall exist. So the user is only asked
once.
Now, if all these packages use debconf, and they all
preconfigure, then when the preconfiguration is run, the file does
not exist -- and thus all the packages in question shall query the
user -- bombarding the installer with multiple versions of the same
question, over and over again -- unless all the packages use the
same, shared, variable.
If there is to be a shared variable, what should the common
shared toplevel hierarchy be? I don't see all these packages (dist,
mailagent, Gnus, VM, and other packages) using a common (virtual)
package name; they are not even close to being similar types of
packages, and thus do not share a common purpose in general, only for
this variable.
The question then becomes: what is this shared variable
called? How does a package maintainer discover this variable? How are
updates to common templates made? Does some package "own" this shared
variable template? Which one?
Where is this central registry of shared variablenames, so
that the next package wanting to create /etc/news/organization can
use the same variable, and not ask the user yet another duplicate
question.
manoj
--
Gunter's Airborne Discoveries: When you are served a meal aboard an
aircraft, the aircraft will encounter turbulence. The strength of the
turbulence is directly proportional to the temperature of your coffee.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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