On 09/10/14 21:49, Joey Hess wrote: > > It's up to individual packages how they deal with debconf settings. > In general, the current configuration of the system is preferred over > what is in the debconf cache when reconfiguring a package. It's often > considered a bug if a package uses some, possibly old value from the > debconf cache and blows away local admin changes to the system. >
I understand. Maybe I am too blind to see, but this is completely left out in debconf(1) and others, i.e. the "confusing and unex- pected" still stands. Maybe it would help to extend the Debian policy to make sure that packages do not ignore their own(!) options stored in the debconf database? Just for using debconf, of course. > Debconf preseeding is not really intended to be used with dpkg-reconfigure, > but instead to be done before a package is installed for the first time. > debconf-set-selections(1): "debconf-set-selections can be used to pre-seed the debconf data- base with answers, or to change answers in the database. Each question will be marked as seen to prevent debconf from asking the question interactively. WARNING Only use this command to seed debconf values for packages that will be or are installed. Otherwise you can end up with values in the database for uninstalled packages that will not go away ..." No word about "first time install only". Some real-life packages simply behave differently to what is des- cribed in the man page, even though they are using debconf. This doesn't seem right. Regards Harri
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