On Wed, 2009-03-18 at 14:42 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > > I'm not sure how many of these were false positives, but I'm fairly sure > that at least some of them are real: > > http://lintian.debian.org/tags/read-in-maintainer-script.html
Not all that many, and some will be false positives. I think we should go for it... > Yes. I think there was some sort of essential package exception discussed > earlier in the bug (although even essential packages should try debconf > first and fall back if it's not available, I think). I'd be very happy to see a policy change for this, so long as it allowed that packages may fall back if debconf (or other alternative) is not available. The current relevant text is: Package maintainer scripts may prompt the user if necessary. Prompting should be done by communicating through a program, such as debconf, which conforms to the Debian Configuration Management Specification, version 2 or higher. Prompting the user by other means, such as by hand[9], is now deprecated. I think we should change that fairly simply to something like: Package maintainer scripts may prompt the user if necessary. Prompting must be done by communicating through a program, such as debconf, which conforms to the Debian Configuration Management Specification, version 2 or higher, unless no such interface is available when they are executed. This: (a) changes the 'should' to a 'must'; (b) gives an out for those situations where debconf is not installed; (c) narrowly focuses that 'out' only to apply during execution (d) seems to me to be a simpler and more elegant approach than other wording proposals against this bug. I've attached a patch to that effect. Cheers, Andrew. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com +64(272)DEBIAN Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/policy.sgml b/policy.sgml index df586d1..342b6c4 100644 --- a/policy.sgml +++ b/policy.sgml @@ -1218,17 +1218,11 @@ <heading>Prompting in maintainer scripts</heading> <p> Package maintainer scripts may prompt the user if - necessary. Prompting should be done by communicating + necessary. Prompting must be done by communicating through a program, such as <prgn>debconf</prgn>, which conforms to the Debian Configuration Management - Specification, version 2 or higher. Prompting the user by - other means, such as by hand<footnote> - From the Jargon file: by hand 2. By extension, - writing code which does something in an explicit or - low-level way for which a presupplied library - (<em>debconf, in this instance</em>) routine ought - to have been available. - </footnote>, is now deprecated. + Specification, version 2 or higher, unless no such + interface is available when they are executed. </p> <p>