Package: debian-policy Version: 3.5.0.0 Severity: wishlist 2.3.8.1 states:
If a package has a vitally important piece of information to pass to the user (such as "don't run me as I am, you must edit the following configuration files first or you risk your system emitting badly-formatted messages"), it should display this in the config or postinst script and prompt the user to hit return to acknowledge the message. Copyright messages do not count as vitally important (they belong in /usr/share/doc/package/copyright); neither do instructions on how to use a program (these should be in on line documentation, where all the users can see them). Any necessary prompting should almost always be confined to the config or postinst script. If it is done in the postinst, it should be protected with a conditional so that unnecessary prompting doesn't happen if a package's installation fails and the postinst is called with abort-upgrade, abort-remove or abort-deconfigure. -- end quote The problem is here is the definition of 'vitallly important'. Numerous packages print information during their postinst runs. When one installs many packages at once, the information is lost as the next postinst prints its info. What I would like to see is text in policy stating that if a package displays any information it must be therefore vitally important information and thus the script must prompt the user. Thanks. -- System Information Debian Release: testing/unstable Architecture: i386 Kernel: Linux one 2.4.0 #1 Fri Jan 5 22:24:46 PST 2001 i686 Versions of packages debian-policy depends on: ii fileutils 4.0.37-1 GNU file management utilities.
