On 26 Mar 2000 07:45:18 -0500, Wichert Akkerman wrote: > > I don't mind improving dpkg, but if we're going to add some new > frontend it should use debconf. We're slowly starting to move to > using debconf for all user interaction and having dpkg itself use > something else would be silly.
I agree that all user interaction should be through debconf, if possible... that's jyst a good idea for user interface consistency. I just think that dpkg should have a generic way of asking the user the conffile replacement question. This way, programs like the one I have written could ask at the start of an apt run about the conffiles that will change. I've found that I can scan to figure this out rather quickly... on my laptop it takes about a minute to scan my apt cache directory, which I left 400+ packages in. The object is to move all of those questions to the start of an apt run, in the same way dpkg-preconfigure did. I'll look strongly into a debconf frontend. The problem I have is that all of the questions asked are unique, and probably shouldn't be stored in a backend database. (Since they change every run, and may have different answers every run.) Is there a way to use debconf to prompt the user for an answer to a question without having to generate a template and use that. (Thus filling the user's database up with crud.) I guess I could have it purge all of the questions it asks... but that just seems somewhat less than satisfactory to me. (There wouldn't perchance, be a dialog-type program that simply uses debconf's frontends, would there?) However, I think that the modifications to dpkg shouldn't depend on debconf directly. The biggest reason is that the conffile prompts would, while looking nicer, occur at the same time... while the original goal was a noniteractive upgrade after the original question period. My tool provides a decent way of achieving this. -- Tom Rothamel --------- http://onegeek.org/~tom/ ------- Using GNU/Linux Writing from home, just outside Northport, NY. The Moon is Waning Gibbous (63% of Full).
