Bug#206684: mandatory use of debconf for user prompting a release goal for squeeze
Andrew McMillan <andrew@morphoss.com> writes:
> On Thu, 2009-03-19 at 10:55 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> Packages that are essential or that are dependencies of essential
>> packages may fall back on another prompting method if no such
>> interface is available when they are executed.
> Since we're essentially saying that all packages must support debconf,
> why bother restricting the set of packages which are allowed to provide
> a fallback?
I want to be sure that people aren't confused into thinking they don't
need a dependency on debconf. I suppose in practice it isn't going to
really matter, since debconf is quasi-essential already, so I guess I can
see your point and I'm being too particular about this.
> From a maintainer's POV surely they will only be working to provide a
> fallback if they desire their package to be installable when debconf is
> not available. I don't think we should second-guess their reasons for
> doing so.
Well... I would a little bit just as an individual DD since I don't think
this is an error case that packages should really be handling except in
exceptional circumstances. If debconf doesn't work, I think the right
thing to do for nearly all packages is to bail and leave the package
unconfigured until debconf is fixed. But you're probably right that we
don't need to say that in Policy.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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