Installation (apart from configuration) should become absolutly
non-interactive. Stopping the unpacking of setting up of packages just
because of one package needing the users interaction is anyoing.
At the moment Policy encourages the package to display important
information and request the user to press return before the
installation can continue.
Quoting the debian policy 2.3.8. Maintainer scripts :
If a package has a vitally important piece of information to pass to
the user (such as "don't run me as I am, you must edit the following
configuration files first or you risk your system emitting
badly-formatted messages"), it should display this in the `postinst'
script and prompt the user to hit return to acknowledge the message.
The first thing to mention is that several Packages that need
configuration before being run give an error in their /etc/init.d
scripts unless one configures them not to. So they don't need to hold
up installation to pass this information along. No harm can be done by
starting them unconfigured.
The second thing is that such information should be collected during
install and be displayed in one chunk afterwards (in a series of
debconf requesters?).
The third thing isn't relevant to the section of ploicy but just as
anoying. When a configfile gets updated dpkg will stop and ask the
user before it continues. Maybe those requests could be collected as
well and be handled seperatly. Those requestst would need the conffile
and the restart command needed. They would not need to rerun the
postinst again or something similar expensive.
Concluding those 3 points I would tike to propose the following:
1. A mechanism should be developed to collect all important
information and display them in one chunk.
2. Policy should be changed to encourage the use of debconf for
configuration and discourage anything that stops unpacking and setting
up of packages until the user does something.
3. dpkg should be changed to collect all conffile changes and handle
them in one chunk apart from the unpacking and seting up of other
packages.
May the Source be with you.
Goswin