Bug#151328: debian-policy: [PROPOSAL] virtual package debconf-2.0
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.5.6.1
Severity: normal
After discussions with Randolph Chung, we've decided that it makes sense
to begin to work toward making cdebconf a viable drop-in replacement for
debconf on debian systems. The immediate problem, besides the various
places cdebconf is lagging debconf, is that 221 packages declare
verisoned dependencies on debconf.
A breakdown of these dependencies is that the ones depending on versions
<< 0.5 are probably relics due to ancient long-fixed bugs in very early
versions of debconf, and the change to protocol version 2.0, and the
renaming of the isdefault flag. The rest are probably too-tight
dependncies, though some may be concientious tracking of recent debconf
bugs I'm not remembering.
Anyway, it looks like packages have few reasons to have versioned deps
on debconf aside from changes to the debconf protocol, so if we
introduce a virtual package debconf-2.0 which both debconf and
cdebconf provide, most of these deps can be converted over to that, and
cdebconf can begin to be installed on debian systems, without apt
wanting to remove 200 packages. So I'm calling for a new virtual package
to be added to the list. Note that the version number, which will be
implemented, refers to the version of the debconf specification. I
considered calling it debconf-protocol-2.0, but that is overlong, and
the protocol is not the entirety of the spec.
One concern is that I know that there are a few little things that are
not specified clearly in the spec, in which debconf and cdebconf
differ. An example would be debconf's special handling of reasking a
question twice in the same run of a script.
Until these differences are identified, and resolved in the spec or at
least implemented the same in debconf and cdebconf, it may be best if
packages use debconf | debconf-protocol-2.0 in their dependencies so
that dselect et al will pick the currently more sane choice by default.
-- System Information
Debian Release: unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux kite 2.4.16 #1 Sat Dec 1 17:37:24 EST 2001 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C
Versions of packages debian-policy depends on:
ii fileutils 4.1-10 GNU file management utilities
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