Re: Private-only debconf templates for preseeding
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 07:25:03PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> The background for this question is Lintian Bug#492626.
> There are several packages in the archive that use private debconf
> templates where the only interface to them is preseeding. Examples
> include the readahead package (where the preseed was added for Debian Edu)
> and cpufrequtils (which documents the preseed in README.Debian).
> Currently, Debian flags these packages as not using po-debconf. That's
> probably the wrong tag regardless, but I'm trying to figure out which way
> to fix it. One approach is to consider this a reasonable use of debconf
> and fix Lintian to not tag it at all. Another would be to tag packages
> that have only private debconf questions as a situation that doesn't make
> a lot of sense.
> My initial reaction was that anything that's worth making available for
> configuration via preseeding is worth a low-priority debconf prompt, and
> that having preseeding be the only interface is a weird way to use
> debconf. But I'm starting to reconsider, particularly given Policy
> 3.9.1's dictate to minimize prompting.
> What do people think about this?
I don't think the 3.9.1 dictate on minimizing prompting is inconsistent with
making the prompts available at low debconf priority. If this were the
meaning of "minimize", surely all low-priority debconf questions should be
stricken for the same reason?
I would certainly prefer that packages give users the opportunity to control
functionality such as this using dpkg-reconfigure -plow, instead of
exclusively by way of hidden tricks.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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