Re: Less interactive upgrades.

[Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk>]

Ben Collins writes ("Re: Less interactive upgrades."):
...
> It would be nice to have a common interface to all package related
> questions. The only down fall is adding one more piece to an already
> complex puzzle. It used to be that the only thing you had to concern
> yourself with on installing packages was dpkg, and now you have apt and
> debconf to add to it.

I agree that there should be a single interface - though probably
package selection is sufficiently complicated and a sufficiently
special case that it should be handled differently.

I think that this single interface should be debconf.  Surely that's
what it's for ?

> I'm not against the idea of moving to a common UI for dpkg. I just think
> it's only fair to point out what the situation is moving to, especially
> when dpkg will have to interact with and depend deeply on this other thing
> working properly (dpkg has always been able to work by itself, this will
> change that).

If we use update-alternatives or something it wouldn't be too hard to
have dpkg use a very simple and stupid builtin if debconf wasn't
installed.

Ian.