Re: Packaging phpLDAPadmin. Newbie's questions.
On Wed, Nov 12, 2003 at 05:06:59PM -0600, David Segonds wrote:
> As a newbie, ignoring lintian advices does not seem the right thing to
> do for some reasons. :)
Indeed. However, they're programatic warnings, which can't handle every
eventuality. Think of them like "unless you can think of a really good reason
to ignore them, take heed!".
> Which raises another question. How good are lintian advices?
Generally pretty good, but as has already been mentioned, they're not
infallible.
> If lintian developers spent time integrating those warnings, they must
> be of some value.
Yes, certainly.
> Do sponsors systematically run lintian before agreeing to upload a
> package? Can a lintian warning stop an upload?
I certainly run it, and if I can't see a good reason for ignoring the
warning, I'll generally bump a question back. If it's something that I know
can be ignored, I'll either recommend a lintian override, or just ignore it
and upload anyway.
I'm pretty certain that there's no lintian checks in the upload queue, at
any rate, unless the ftp masters run it over new uploads themselves and make
similar checks to those of sponsors.
> > It is up to you, and depends on what you think would provide the best value
> > for you and your users.
>
> Packaging time is also a factor. It is only a few well documented lines
> that need to be changed in the configuration file but automatizing the
> process may require a lot of work. As a user, I go an twick conffiles
> myself. Can I expect this from the "average" user? (if such a thing
> exists)
>
> I am not trying to troll here but merely to get acquainted with the Debian
> way of doing things so I can fit in as soon as possible and reduce the
> number of newbie questions.
It's not a bad question, certainly.
If you can reasonably expect your target audience to read the README.Debian
file and edit the config file by hand, then I'd say let them edit.
Certainly, if it's only one or two lines, in one file, and you can easily
point them at the right spot, then probably the payoff of your time vs their
time (including the time which would need to be spent answering the question
anyway) probably isn't good enough to make it worth writing the debconf
frontend.
- Matt
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