Re: Clarification: Eliminate nagging at installation time?
On Wed, Jul 07, 1999 at 03:46:15PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 07, 1999 at 08:03:19AM +0000, Norbert Nemec wrote:
> > I do not talk about where packages should get their configuration
> > information from, I did talk about what they do, if they do not have the
> > information necessary. (And even with he perfect autoconfig system, there
> > will be stuations when the packages lack some information they need to
> > configure completely)
> >
> > IMO, packages should under no circumstances complain
> > about anything if it is avoidable at all.
>
> One of the key attractions of Debian for me is that every (well, nearly)
> package is adequately configured whenever it's installed. If I want to
> use any given program, all I need to do is run apt-get and answer the
> postinst questions. I don't have to go looking in /usr/doc, I don't
> have to poke through /etc, I don't have to run some weird scripts from
> /usr/lib/somewhere. I don't have to think.
Ok, but the problem I see, is that you are forced to answer all the
questions right there in the middle of the installation. If you don't want
to (or can't) decide right there, there is oten no possibility to put it up
for later. If you make a mistake, it is often not that easy to find out how
to do that again. And what is most: Right now if you are installing a huge
pile of packages, it looks like: Wait 50 secs * Answer one question * wait 1
minute * Hit Return to confirm reading a warning and so on.
What I envision is:
- have the naggings in scripts in one directory that are called by one
command automatically all in one boost.
- have a clear and readable log of all important information, also
containing the most basic hint how to go on about iportant details about
configureation. (Right now, important output from postinst scripts simply gets lost in
all the dpkg messages.)
> I like this, and I think it's a wonderful feature of the Debian package
> system. What you propose seems to remove this possibility.
I like that as well, but I would like it even more, if it cold be done in
some cleaner way.
> As an example, what would happen to netbase's postinst questions and
> comments? It currently warns about stopping the portmapper (and thus
> possibly doing horrible things to any rpc processes, such as NFS), it
> asks if you want to add some IPv6 entries to /etc/hostsc (which could
> possibly do bad things to programs not coping with ipv6 addressing, but
> doesn't seem to), and if you want ipfwadm to make calls to ipchains under
> kernel 2.2 or not.
Those questions and comments would not get lost in the dpkg output but be
collected in one nice log file. (Even if one is asked to hit a key, one
often does not really concentrate on reading the info. And then it is lost
immediately.)
> There are reasonable defaults for all these things, and they can all
> be fixed after install. But it seems to me that the possibility of
> having your system suddenly get trashed for no apparent reason makes
> the nagging worthwhile.
I would think there should always be a default state for a package that can
not cause the system to be trashed. And if it is simply disabling it until
it is configured.
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