Bug#206684: debian-policy: Proposal for going ahead with mandatory debconf use for prompting

[Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org>]

(l10n-french removed from the CC list....I did not intend to keep this
discussion there....it still belongs to i18n, imho...)


> I'd like to add one thing to the proposal: there needs to be an
> exemption somehow for packages with high priority, e.g. Essential
> packages and those in the dependency chain of debconf itself. Such
> packages must be allowed to use debconf only if available, and otherwise
> fall back to other means of prompting the user.

Sure, this has to be mentioned. 

Let's try to reformulate. We have enough time as this should wait
sarge release.. :-)

    Package maintainer scripts may prompt the user if necessary.
    Prompting must be accomplished by communicating through a program
    which conforms to the Debian Configuration management
    specification, version 2 or higher, such as `debconf'[2]. This
    program should include a mechanism based on gettext for an easy 
    management of user prompting internationalisation.

    Packages with "Essential" priority as well as packages debconf
    depends upon are exempted from this obligation though they should
    use a gettext-based system for allowing user prompting
    internationalisation.

Please feel free to rewrite for better english, of course...