On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Joey Hess wrote: > Doogie asked me to send in a list of ways dpkg could better support > debconf. In rough order of usefulness: > > 1. Run config script under debconf before running postinst script of > package, passing in appropriate arguments. /usr/bin/debconf takes a > script to run under debconf and arguments to pass to the script as > parameters, and this is what it was designed for.
Don't you mean running the config script before preinst? > Benefits include me being able to get rid of a load of gross code in > debconf that works out the config script to run (grossly handling > things like config script running before a preinst, by hardcoding in > where dpkg currently unpacks a package control info into tmp.ci). > Also, it would eliminate the requirement that postinst scripts do > special stuff to let debconf hook in and run the config script. > > An old patch to do this is > http://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2001/debian-dpkg-200102/msg00003.html > Also has useful discussion of why it may be better to run the > config script after the preinst, not before it. > > 2. Somehow work out which regular maintainer scripts expect to > communicate with debconf, and run them under /usr/bin/debconf. This > would eliminate gross hackery in the current > ". /usr/share/debconf/confmodule" mechanism, which currently involves > re-execing the maintainer script that calls it. This would probably > be best implemented as a new control file field, something like > "Debconf-MaintScript: postinst postrm" > > 3. Add a new status field or state so that dpkg can track which packages > have had their config script run already (and which version of it) and > skip re-running the config script. This would merely cut down on > duplicate runs of the idempotent config scripts when a package is > preconfigured before dpkg runs. The rest of this seems doable.
