Re: Another job for the QA team

[Julian Gilbey <J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk>]

> One more reason not to have press-enter-to-continue's in maintainer
> scripts, even if the information or question presented seems important
> (some "crucial" change to a conffile or something like that): if you
> have something to say, don't put press-enter after displaying the
> information, but send the info to our FAQ maintainer for inclusion in
> Debian FAQ.

In my new version of the fvwm package (2.2-x), there have been radical
changes.  The postinst will do its best not to irrevocably retrieve
the information it expects to currently be present, but it warns the
installer that certain information may be lost, thus giving them a
chance to rescue it first.  I do not think that this is an
unreasonable query, but better ways of handling it are always welcome.

A more questionable example: "Should I make this the default window
manager?"  We could always do so be default, but since the sysadmin
may have already chosed the default window manager, they may not like
this behaviour.

And of course, dpkg asks questions when trying to upgrade modified
conffiles.

So we're left with purposeless questions: "Do you realise that this
package has been upgraded?  You must see the README!  Press enter to
continue...."  Of course the package is being upgraded!

   Julian

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
             Debian GNU/Linux Developer.  jdg@debian.org
       -*- Finger jdg@master.debian.org for my PGP public key. -*-