Bug#85500: [PROPOSED] please strengthen section 2.3.8.1's stance on messages in postinsts

[Sean Perry <shaleh@via.net>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.5.0.0
Severity: wishlist

2.3.8.1 states:

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 config or postinst script and prompt the user to hit return
to acknowledge the message. Copyright messages do not count as vitally
important (they belong in /usr/share/doc/package/copyright); neither do
instructions on how to use a program (these should be in on line documentation,
where all the users can see them). 

Any necessary prompting should almost always be confined to the config or
postinst script. If it is done in the postinst, it should be protected with a
conditional so that unnecessary prompting doesn't happen if a package's
installation fails and the postinst is called with abort-upgrade, abort-remove
or abort-deconfigure.

-- end quote

The problem is here is the definition of 'vitallly important'.  Numerous
packages print information during their postinst runs.  When one installs many
packages at once, the information is lost as the next postinst prints its info.

What I would like to see is text in policy stating that if a package displays
any information it must be therefore vitally important information and thus the
script must prompt the user.

Thanks.

-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux one 2.4.0 #1 Fri Jan 5 22:24:46 PST 2001 i686

Versions of packages debian-policy depends on:
ii  fileutils                     4.0.37-1   GNU file management utilities.