Re: Configuration management, revision 3
On Tue, 28 Jul 1998, Joey Hess wrote:
> Yes, I understand the distinction. I see the advantages to having a set
> of questions, rather than a script. But I doubt it will be flexable enough.
> Consider some examples of the questions asked in postinsts now. They often
> go through a tree of possible questions and subquestions:
>
> Do you want me to do foo?
> yes
> Do you want me to do foo2 as well?
> yes
> no
> What about foo3?
> yes
> no
> no
> Well then do you want me to do bar?
> yes
> no
>
> How do you present this in a simple database of questions without presenting
> the user with a coplicated mismash of questions?
First, you try not to do that in the postinsts. Look at how M$ forms most
of it's configuration and you don't see this. A change of what you want to
ask and how you phrase it can likely advoid many of these cases.
If necessary then it is probably the exception not the rule. You provide
information to all possible queries in all possible events and provide
guidance in the description. For some common constructs (like enable this
feature set yes/no) we can provide descriptive tags to guide the GUI
writer.
Having a progmatic type script does not aleviate this problem, you still
have exactly the same situation when you have a pre-initialized database.
Remember with a description of the field you still have progmatic control
over when/what fields are accessed!
Jason
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