Bug#206684: debian-policy: Proposal for going ahead with mandatory debconf use for prompting
On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 02:26:36PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > Yes, libc6(\.1)* does include such non-debconf prompting code for this
> > reason, so I think the exception is needed.
> Several packages contain such code (including postfix, IIRC). What I was
> never sure about was whether it was actually necessary or not.
To date, I have not been aware of a scenario in which debconf would have
been broken and unusable in the middle of an upgrade as a result of being
unpacked but not yet configured; but the number of packages that would be
rendered virtually-essential by libc6 depending on debconf is significant --
debconf-english, debconf-i18n, liblocale-gettext-perl, libtext-iconv-perl,
libtext-wrapi18n-perl, libtext-charwidth-perl would all have to be usable
when unpacked but not configured, AFAICS, in order for debconf to be
guaranteed-usable in unpacked-only state, and given that glibc needs to
interact with the user in the preinst in some cases, this would become a
case of circular pre-depends among essential packages. (libc6 pre-depends
on debconf for preinst use; debconf pre-depends on debconf-i18n |
debconf-english to ensure usability when unpacked only, by enforcing unpack
ordering; several of the other modules depend on libc6.)
So yes, I don't see any way around this exception for glibc. postfix would
have no excuse, though.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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