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Bug#224509: [PROPOSAL] Correct spurious promise regarding TTY availability



Op vr 19-12-2003, om 16:45 schreef Tore Anderson:
> Package: debian-policy
> Severity: wishlist
> 
>   Current policy says a controlling terminal is guaranteed to be
>  available in the maintainer scripts.  This is simply not true, for
>  dpkg will happily run without one - which makes all scripts that
>  make explicit use of /dev/tty (as policy recommends) fail with
>  the error message '/dev/tty: No such device or address'.
> 
>   The following patch should correct policy so it documents current
>  practise instead of making incorrect guarantees:

If this change is accepted, policy should also document that any
frontend to the package manager should ensure it sets up a controlling
tty for the dpkg run, unless the frontend itself is started
noninteractively.

That said, I don't think it's a good idea to do this. Many packages
depend on having a controlling tty available, and aren't buggy since
current policy allows it. Changing that would make all those packages
instantly buggy, which should be avoided if at all possible (and it most
certainly is possible)

-- 
Wouter Verhelst
Debian GNU/Linux -- http://www.debian.org
Nederlandstalige Linux-documentatie -- http://nl.linux.org
Most people have two reasons for doing anything -- a good reason, and
the real reason

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