retitle 226180: xserver-xfree86: [debconfage rewrite] not ameanable to configuration with readline frontend; lack of defaults thanks On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 05:13:17PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: > Package: xserver-xfree86 > Version: 4.2.1-14 > Severity: normal > > The debconf configuration for xserver-xfree86 has a large number of > questions that are missing any default option. Some of these are not > obvious when xserver-xfree86 is configured using debconf's dialog > frontend. For example: > > Note that mouse buttons in excess of five (counting a scroll wheel as two > buttons, one each for "up" and "down", and a third if the wheel "clicks") are > not yet supported with this configuration tool. > > :-) Emulate 3 button mouse? > :-) Emulate 3 button mouse? > > There is no reason why there cannot be a default value for this question. > Moreover, there _is_ an implicit default, when using the dialog frontend: > Whatever button dialog decides to highlight when it's not specified. Only > with the text frontend do boolean and select questions have no default > value. So you should go through and add reasonable defaults for all such > things. I used to have them. I had to rip them all out when I added the autodetection code. My testing experience showed me that I couldn't both do autodetection cleanly and have defaults in the debconf database. I forget what all the scenarios were, but it was very frustrating to write, as you can probably see from the amount of indirection and messiness in the current xserver-xfree86.config script. I think that script is in a hopeless state and it needs to be rewritten from scratch. > Here is another one, using the string type: > > Users of U.S. English keyboards should generally enter "pc104". > > :-) Please select your keyboard model. > > Please enter a value for the entry. > > A null entry is not permitted. > > <proceeds to redislay the whole question> As opposed to only part of it? How would I accomplish that without yet another template? Wouldn't omitting the long description be a frontend decision? > Users of U.S. English keyboards should generally enter "pc104". > > :-) Please select your keyboard model. > > So, why not use "pc104" as a default. Better, why not come up with a > good default based on the selected keymap in console-tools. Or, you could > try to get the value of debian-installer/keymap, which will be available > in the debconf db on systems installed by debian-installer. Anyway, > there should be a reasonable default provided. Ooh, debian-installer/keymap. That sounds nice. I've seen you complaining about 1 billion different packages that ask what country people live in, too. You should probably mail debian-devel-announce a heads up to people regarding what configuration data is available in debian-installer debconf templates. Once a few people have moved on this (you have my support, FWIW), you can say its current practice and ram a Policy proposal through. Perhaps in the release *after* sarge we can get some stuff nicely centralized. And I hope that d-i absolutely, unconditionally, always always always sets the hostname. Everybody seems to assume it's set, and nobody *EVER* bothers to do any error handling if it isn't. They're wrong, but they're also terminally lazy and we'll never get them all fixed. -- G. Branden Robinson | The last Christian died on the Debian GNU/Linux | cross. branden@debian.org | -- Friedrich Nietzsche http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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