Re: [custom] Custom Debian Distros need the help from debian developers

[zinie@cs.unibo.it (Enrico Zini)]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2004 at 02:28:26PM +0100, Thomas Viehmann wrote:

> One of the obvious things that got asked multiple but that none of the
> 'keep debconf promt'ers answered is: Why is it critical for you to have
> these defaults done with debconf as opposed to customizing config files?

Because, as Petter outlined in his mail, the install scripts of a
package shouldn't mess with the files of others:

> > The alternative is to replace or edit other packages files, and this
> > is error prone and hard to do within the current policy.

I should recall that Custom Debians are about creating a pre-configured,
100%-true-debian-and-policy-compliant distribution.

The best solution Custom Debians came up so far to address this issue is
to pre-seed hidden debconf questions, which are set to priorities so low
that they never get asked.

This is so far the best way for a package to customize others for
special environments.  Everyone reckons this is not optimal, but it's
the best that's been found, it requires no policy changes and little
effort from packagers.

AFAIK this customization problem is still an open problem.  Better
proposals are indeed warmly accepted.  I imagine that in order to be
able to fuel some wider discussion, Custom Debians should provide a nice
collection of cases in which this is required.

I'm more and more convinced that common Custom Debian problems need a
bit of rationalization, structure, examples and communication to the
rest of the community.

Can't wait to work on it! :)


Ciao,

Enrico