Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 10:48:52AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 09:56:51AM -0800, Ian Zimmerman wrote: And is the overwhelming majority of interactive scripts that _do_ use debconf already not a huge enough amount? No, it's not current practice to use debconf when a bunch of important packages specifically don't use it. Which ones? The only one I can think of is LILO which appeared to have less to do with debconf than with the maintainer getting flamed to death for trashing everyone's configuration. -- You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever. pgpHSIprAJHgK.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Anthony Towns wrote: On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 12:16:15PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: - a package has it's documentation in /usr/doc - the maintainer gets a patch how to change it - the maintainer refuses the patch I want to have the documentation in /usr/doc. - a package doesn't use debconf for interaction with the user while asking the user questions at installation time - the maintainer gets a patch how to change it - the maintainer refuses the patch I don't want to use debconf. I don't get the point why it's all right to send a RC bug report in the first case but not in the second case. The point is people shouldn't be saying Oh, I don't want to do that for no reason whatsoever. And, indeed, they don't; they'll generally have a *reason* for doing so. The reason for the former being RC is that FHS compliance is RC ... That's not an answery. Let me formulate my questionas follows: Why do we _force_ our volunteer maintainers to do the FHS transition? And why shouldn't we force our volunteer maintainers to use debconf? Cheers, aj cu Adrian -- Get my GPG key: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] | gpg --import Fingerprint: B29C E71E FE19 6755 5C8A 84D4 99FC EA98 4F12 B400
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 08:57:26AM +, Mark Brown wrote: And is the overwhelming majority of interactive scripts that _do_ use debconf already not a huge enough amount? No, it's not current practice to use debconf when a bunch of important packages specifically don't use it. Which ones? wu-ftpd and php4-* were cited earlier, along with lilo. bind was also cited but is apparently fixed. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Anthony Towns wrote: ... aj, who'll be proposing the MUST/SHOULD nonsense be removed from the hands of policy when he gets some free time again Let's play the evil maintainer game: I play the evil maintainer who does everything with his packages that isn't forbidden. You (and others if they want) try to convince me that I'm wrong. We could set some goals, e.g. I win when I get three packages statically linked against libc (the idea comes from the thread about gnumeric linking statically with libgal that is currently on debian-devel) into testing and you win if you convince me not to do this... Yes, I know this sounds ridiculous, but remember that we have 900 different people maintaining our packages - and every person has his own personality. cu Adrian -- Get my GPG key: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] | gpg --import Fingerprint: B29C E71E FE19 6755 5C8A 84D4 99FC EA98 4F12 B400
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 10:54:41AM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Anthony Towns wrote: On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 07:58:26PM +0100, Massimo Dal Zotto wrote: The lack of automatic installation is the reason why I don't install Debian any more for my customers. Oh, and to clarify: I completely agree. This is, IMO, the biggest missing feature in Debian at the moment. There are the usual problems: - the evil maintainer that simply refuses patches Cite. Then do what I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and discuss it with the maintainer in good faith, try to work out exactly what the issues the maintainer has with the patch are and make sure they're solved to the best of your ability, and then if there's still a problem, take it to -devel. - several of our 900 maintainers are completely MIA and a wishlist bug isn't a good reason for a NMU Uh, a very small minority of packages are interactive, and a fairly small minority of developers are MIA. Further, a wishlist bug *is* a reason to do an NMU, it's merely not a reason to just completely ignore the maintainer's wishes and do it immediately. Imagining that changing policy is like waving a magic wand and'll suddenly make everything all wonderful and work just the way you want it to with no effort on your part is a delusion. Forget it, and move on already. Is our main goal to give a c00l @debian.org address to everyone or to make a high quality distribution? What are you smoking now? Seriously: If there's something that makes things for many people easier (IMHO debconf is an example) and if we give the maintainers enough time (read several months or years) it's IMHO correct to force every maintainer to do a change. Again, you are completely wrong here. The way to do a change is not to do it via changing policy, or making rules and threats, it's to get out there and write the code and talk to maintainers. If you can't be bothered to put your time and energy where your mouth is (ie, by doing the work rather than telling other people to do it), well, quite frankly: shut up. If you are willing to do the work, have at it. You don't need policy's support to do it though. If anyone comes back at you along the lines of sure this improves things for users, but it's not in policy so I just won't bother, I'm happy to flame them in much the same way as I'm flaming you now, for what that's worth. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt pgpdZKhvbEUaV.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 11:19:42AM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Anthony Towns wrote: aj, who'll be proposing the MUST/SHOULD nonsense be removed from the hands of policy when he gets some free time again I play the evil maintainer who does everything with his packages that isn't forbidden. We could set some goals, e.g. I win when I get three packages statically linked against libc (the idea comes from the thread about gnumeric And I win when I get you kicked out of the project for good? How about we not play stupid games using our users as pawns in stupid debates, and just get on with *writing some code*. When you find some idiots who don't have good reasons for applying prewritten patches to make their packages install noninteractively, we'll talk. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt pgpOmL8VJruri.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Mark Brown wrote: On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 10:48:52AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 09:56:51AM -0800, Ian Zimmerman wrote: And is the overwhelming majority of interactive scripts that _do_ use debconf already not a huge enough amount? No, it's not current practice to use debconf when a bunch of important packages specifically don't use it. Which ones? The only one I can think of is LILO which appeared to have less to do with debconf than with the maintainer getting flamed to death for trashing everyone's configuration. AFAIK Exim doesn't use debconf (although as soon as I can find time to learn debconf, a bug+patch will be filed - I want Exim non-interactive). -- --- #include disclaimer.h Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 12:19:23AM -0500, John R. Daily wrote: Possible reasons for mandating policy: insuring interoperability, consistency, functionality, and desire to be a fascist jerk. Why assume the latter when the first three are valid, and valuable to boot? Because the first three are better achieved by other methods, and don't need the threat of exclusion from the distribution to achieve. Why do we require things like shlibs, or listing dependencies, or using .deb files? Because each of those have actually been tried for ages and work. Debconf provides another layer of consistency that enables functionality that few, if any, other distributions can provide in a quality fashion. Yes, great, wonderful. Now spend some time talking with the maintainers you want to have use debconf and make sure it actually works for them. Sure, power corrupts, and should be used judiciously. But no matter how much Debian sucks[1], imagine how much more it would suck if there weren't reasonable standards by which developers were expected to abide? Now imagine how much more it would suck if all our developers, instead of being voluntarily committed to making Debian the best it can possibly be out of the goodness of their own hearts, were instead unwilling to do anything until some rulebook said they had to do it or else they'd be kicked out of the project. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Sat, 8 Dec 2001, Anthony Towns wrote: ... If you want every package to use debconf, that's fine and wonderful. Go make a list of the ones that don't, write patches so that they will, file bugs so the maintainer knows about them, then have a friendly discussion with the maintainers to make sure that they're satisfied with the patches. Let me compare two cases: - a package has it's documentation in /usr/doc - the maintainer gets a patch how to change it - the maintainer refuses the patch I want to have the documentation in /usr/doc. - a package doesn't use debconf for interaction with the user while asking the user questions at installation time - the maintainer gets a patch how to change it - the maintainer refuses the patch I don't want to use debconf. I don't get the point why it's all right to send a RC bug report in the first case but not in the second case. Cheers, aj cu Adrian -- Get my GPG key: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] | gpg --import Fingerprint: B29C E71E FE19 6755 5C8A 84D4 99FC EA98 4F12 B400
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 12:16:15PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: - a package has it's documentation in /usr/doc - the maintainer gets a patch how to change it - the maintainer refuses the patch I want to have the documentation in /usr/doc. - a package doesn't use debconf for interaction with the user while asking the user questions at installation time - the maintainer gets a patch how to change it - the maintainer refuses the patch I don't want to use debconf. I don't get the point why it's all right to send a RC bug report in the first case but not in the second case. The point is people shouldn't be saying Oh, I don't want to do that for no reason whatsoever. And, indeed, they don't; they'll generally have a *reason* for doing so. The reason for the former being RC is that FHS compliance is RC and there's no technical reason for them to prefer /usr/doc over /usr/share/doc. And thanks to this stupid MUST thing in policy everyone's wasting their time trying to figure out how to force people to do things, instead of making sure that there's absolutely no reason why they wouldn't want to. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 09:22:09PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: And thanks to this stupid MUST thing in policy everyone's wasting their time trying to figure out how to force people to do things, instead of making sure that there's absolutely no reason why they wouldn't want to. Trouble is, when the maintainer really is being wierd there's not much you can do about it so people wind up wanting to find a big stick to use to try to get through to them. Assuming people are going to do the sensible thing doesn't always work. -- You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever. pgpfuvYeGFY0c.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 01:02:25PM +, Mark Brown wrote: On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 09:22:09PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: And thanks to this stupid MUST thing in policy everyone's wasting their time trying to figure out how to force people to do things, instead of making sure that there's absolutely no reason why they wouldn't want to. Trouble is, when the maintainer really is being wierd there's not much you can do about it so people wind up wanting to find a big stick to use to try to get through to them. Sure there's something you can do: forward it on to -devel, try to make sure it's clear what (if anything) the maintainer and you think the issues are, and try to come to some sort of consensus about what should be done. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt pgpHxiBj2eN4h.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 11:41:50PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Sure there's something you can do: forward it on to -devel, try to make sure it's clear what (if anything) the maintainer and you think the issues are, and try to come to some sort of consensus about what should be done. Of course. Thing is that that's an awful lot of hassle and rather offputting so people still want that big stick that would save them grinding through it for stuff that really ought to be obvious. -- You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever. pgp5RsMrEs2FB.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Monday, December 10, 2001 9:46 AM, Mark Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course. Thing is that that's an awful lot of hassle and rather offputting so people still want that big stick that would save them grinding through it for stuff that really ought to be obvious. Do you not agree that because of the reasons already identified, particularly: * debconf is still relatively young * lets put our energies where they will be most productive that we should put this item on a too-be-revisited-at-[Year][Month][Date] list, and let the issue sleep. Best regards, Lloyd __ Get your FREE personalized e-mail at http://www.canada.com
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 07:10:54AM -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do you not agree that because of the reasons already identified, particularly: * debconf is still relatively young I'm talking about the general trend towards people wanting to put everything sensible in policy irrespective of how obvious it may seem, not this specific proposal. -- You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever. pgpfYNIxnkrZh.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at Monday, December 10, 2001 10:33 AM, Mark Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Do you not agree that because of the reasons already identified, particularly: * debconf is still relatively young I'm talking about the general trend towards people wanting to put everything sensible in policy irrespective of how obvious it may seem, not this specific proposal. I am pretty new to Debian, but from other exp. I hear where you are coming from... the challenge with more common sense in policy is the increase in noise to signal for most debians (users/developers). Common sense should win out when the information is presented on a per case basis -- if the sense is not so common, then sure, make it policy. Best regards, Lloyd __ Get your FREE personalized e-mail at http://www.canada.com
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
aj You don't need an excuse to not mandate something, you need a damn aj good reason to mandate, and a huge amount of current practice to aj support it. Is the reason given by OP not damn good enough? And is the overwhelming majority of interactive scripts that _do_ use debconf already not a huge enough amount? Just asking, -- Ian Zimmerman, Oakland, California, U.S.A. GPG: 433BA087 9C0F 194F 203A 63F7 B1B8 6E5A 8CA3 27DB 433B A087 In his own soul a man bears the source from which he draws all his sorrows and his joys. Sophocles.
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Mark Brown wrote: On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 09:22:09PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: And thanks to this stupid MUST thing in policy everyone's wasting their time trying to figure out how to force people to do things, instead of making sure that there's absolutely no reason why they wouldn't want to. Trouble is, when the maintainer really is being wierd there's not much you can do about it so people wind up wanting to find a big stick to use to try to get through to them. Assuming people are going to do the sensible thing doesn't always work. Inasmuch as that is true, we're doomed anyway, policy or no policy. Britton
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 09:56:51AM -0800, Ian Zimmerman wrote: aj You don't need an excuse to not mandate something, you need a damn aj good reason to mandate, and a huge amount of current practice to aj support it. Is the reason given by OP not damn good enough? No, not really. When we can actually support non-interactive installs and the like, then it'll be a good reason to make it a RC bug not so new packages don't break that feature; but until we can and do support it, it definitely should not be a RC bug not to. And is the overwhelming majority of interactive scripts that _do_ use debconf already not a huge enough amount? No, it's not current practice to use debconf when a bunch of important packages specifically don't use it. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 02:46:17PM +, Mark Brown wrote: On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 11:41:50PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Sure there's something you can do: forward it on to -devel, try to make sure it's clear what (if anything) the maintainer and you think the issues are, and try to come to some sort of consensus about what should be done. Of course. Thing is that that's an awful lot of hassle and rather offputting so people still want that big stick that would save them grinding through it for stuff that really ought to be obvious. ie, People aren't interested in doing any work themselves to help maintainers, they're just interested in ensuring other people put in the work to make sure whatever they want to do works, and making sure there's some way to punish everyone else if they don't do it I'm still mildly surprised that this sort of sentiment is considered reasonable by subscribers to this list, but I hope no one is shocked that I think it was a vast mistake to let people who hold that sort of sentiment having any influence over the RC-ness of bugs. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt pgp07SHIrE2fu.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 07:58:26PM +0100, Massimo Dal Zotto wrote: In my opinion now that we have debconf we should mandate its use by policy. No. We. Should. Not. We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing environment. Nowhere in the Social Contract do I see the following caviat: But #4 is negotiable, because after all, we are volunteers. If placing our users' interests first is one of the 5 commitments we agree to when we become Debian Developers, then what excuse is there for not mandating debconf? -John Daily [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
And Yay! Woo! I get to do this stupid rant, yet again. On Sun, Dec 09, 2001 at 11:28:51PM -0500, John R. Daily wrote: We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing environment. Yes, and we've all already agreed to that. So there's no need to try to use policy as some sort of stick to do it. If people aren't using debconf, it's either because they don't know how to use it effectively -- in which case the most productive solution is to help them -- or because debconf just plain doesn't work for their package -- in which case debconf needs to be improved. If placing our users' interests first is one of the 5 commitments we agree to when we become Debian Developers, then what excuse is there for not mandating debconf? You don't need an excuse to not mandate something, you need a damn good reason to mandate, and a huge amount of current practice to support it. I realise most everyone here is more interested in pulling out the whips and joining the overlord committee to lord it over everyone else in the project, but that is just completely the wrong thing to be doing. Cheers, aj, who'll be proposing the MUST/SHOULD nonsense be removed from the hands of policy when he gets some free time again -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt pgpPCoKlZRd8A.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, John R. Daily wrote: Possible reasons for mandating policy: insuring interoperability, consistency, functionality, and desire to be a fascist jerk. 1) insuring interoperability If a package doesn't work with the interface another package provides, it's still a bug. Policy has nothing to do with that. 2) consistency See 1. 3) functionality See 1. 4) fascist jerk This is true. So, policy only exists for the fascist jerks?
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
Anthony == Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: Anthony Consider, eg, #90676. What is the problem here? If a program tries to read an input from STDIN, then IMHO it is not debconf compliant, as you will still have problems with automatic installations. This is just one bug I have seen with packages that use debconf. Another one is packages that insist on asking the questions twice: once after apt has downloaded the package and once for after the package has been unpacked. Sometime I probably should test some suspect packages for this problem and file bug reports. -- Brian May [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, VALETTE Eric wrote: I have been discussing quite a lot on different debian mailing list on a way to automate debian installation. The final and almost unfiform answer was to use debconf in non-interactive mode. The technical reason is that due to use of tty the following command does not work : dpkg -i pakace EOF input1 input2 EOF expect will do wonders. Also, look at /usr/share/doc/expect/examples/autoexpect. It can record your interaction, and produce a working expect script.
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 04:35:17PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: It's some work for a maintainer to convert a package that simply uses things like cat EOM for interaction with the user to debconf - and if the maintainer is for any reason not willing to convert his package (he might even refuse a patch) the only way to force him to make this change is when policy says he has to do it. To pseudo-quote Anthony Towns on this one: policy is not a stick to hit lazy maintainers with. There is no way to force anyone, but patches are gratefully accepted by most maintainers. Julian -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, Debian GNU/Linux Developer Queen Mary, Univ. of London see http://people.debian.org/~jdg/ http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~jdg/ or http://www.debian.org/ Visit http://www.thehungersite.com/ to help feed the hungry Also: http://www.helpthehungry.org/
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 04:35:17PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Anthony Towns wrote: If debconf isn't good enough that everyone's not using it voluntarily (lilo has been converted *from* debconf), then the obvious thing to do is to improve debconf, not try to force everyone to make their packages worse. Which of these cases is true? 1. debconf misses functionality needed 2. bugs in debconf Consider, eg, #90676. It's some work for a maintainer to convert a package that simply uses things like cat EOM for interaction with the user to debconf - and if the maintainer is for any reason not willing to convert his package (he might even refuse a patch) the only way to force him to make this change is when policy says he has to do it. I just wanted to point out that the current situation is not good for people trying to promote debian in large scale organization by trying to automate install (we have around 250 PC): On one hand, debconf, dpkg have provision for non interactive mode leading to complex code for handling user inputs for acommodating the complex requirements. On the other hand, while most packages have converted to debconf postinst, having package in base install not using debconf postinst mode destroy the work done by everery one. If dpkg, apt-get were allowing to enter inputs from a script, I would not have complained. Here we are in totally absurd situation where tools to handle the problem exist but are not used. Furthermore, the fact that the tools exist forbid to use the old Unix tricks for suplying inputs. That is *completely* the wrong attitude. We're all volunteers; we're not here to be forced to do anything. Yes but freedom stops exactly where freedom starts for the other. What consideration do people rejecting debconf have for those who have converted their cod? If I open a bug to dpkg, apt-get saying I want to be able to install in non-interactive mode, I'm told Not A Bug. Use debconf non-interactive mode. If I do it and find packages that breaks the non-interactive mode, and open a bug against debconf, it is closed saying that the bug is in the package causing the problem. If I open a bug for the package, I'm told never as long as I'm the maintainer of the package Remember me crimeOsoft support sometimes... So I think this is either a policy problem, or that debconf non-interactive mode is meaning less or unusable. Not I do not want to force anyone to use debconf, I'm just asling to have a way to force non-interactive mode for packages not using debconf either by adding a flag to dpkg, dpkg-reconfigure, apt-get to avoid opening a new tty. A least, gieven the discussion I think the issue I rized is not my only concern. And by the way, I love this distrib of course and therefore all the voluntary maintainers :-) Have a nice week-end, -- __ / ` Eric Valette - Canon CRF /-- __ o _. Product Dev. Group Software Team Leader (___, / (_(_(__ Rue de la touche lambert 35517 Cesson-Sevigne Cedex FRANCE Tel: +33 (0)2 99 87 68 91 Fax: +33 (0)2 99 84 11 30 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.crf.canon.fr
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 12:19:51AM +, Julian Gilbey wrote: To pseudo-quote Anthony Towns on this one: policy is not a stick to hit lazy maintainers with. Oh, come now. *Anything* can be a stick to hit lazy maintainers with. Just so long as they get beaten. -- G. Branden Robinson| I came, I saw, she conquered. Debian GNU/Linux | The original Latin seems to have [EMAIL PROTECTED] | been garbled. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Robert Heinlein pgp4FU85gNpNV.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
That is *completely* the wrong attitude. We're all volunteers; we're not here to be forced to do anything. Cheers, aj, wondering if he's going to have to do the must rant yet again -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt Yes, but we should try to make something that doen't suck too much. The lack of automatic installation is the reason why I don't install Debian any more for my customers. I wrote an automatic installer (which worked) for slink, but I had to spend weeks to adapt the postinst scripts of debian packages to it, and I didn't want to repeat all the work for potato and woody. In my opinion now that we have debconf we should mandate its use by policy. It is true that we are volunteers but we all agree to follow a policy and if the policy says that we must use debconf we'll use it. -- Massimo Dal Zotto +--+ | Massimo Dal Zotto email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Via Marconi, 141phone: ++39-461534251 | | 38057 Pergine Valsugana (TN) www: http://www.cs.unitn.it/~dz/ | | Italy http://www.debian.org/~dz/ | | gpg: 2DB65596 3CED BDC6 4F23 BEDA F489 2445 147F 1AEA 2DB6 5596 | +--+
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
Massimo Dal Zotto [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I wrote an automatic installer (which worked) for slink, but I had to spend weeks to adapt the postinst scripts of debian packages to it, and I didn't want to repeat all the work for potato and woody. This was my experience, too. In my opinion now that we have debconf we should mandate its use by policy. I think that would be a good idea.
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 07:58:26PM +0100, Massimo Dal Zotto wrote: In my opinion now that we have debconf we should mandate its use by policy. No. We. Should. Not. If you want every package to use debconf, that's fine and wonderful. Go make a list of the ones that don't, write patches so that they will, file bugs so the maintainer knows about them, then have a friendly discussion with the maintainers to make sure that they're satisfied with the patches. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, VALETTE Eric wrote: I have been discussing quite a lot on different debian mailing list on a way to automate debian installation. The final and almost unfiform answer was to use debconf in non-interactive mode. The technical reason is that due to use of tty the following command does not work : dpkg -i pakace EOF input1 input2 EOF ... So far the following packages do not follow the rule : 1) lilo, 2) wu-ftpd, 3) php4-* pacakges, 4) bind 5) exim (our default MTA) ... So could the debian policy regarding package postinst script ask either to use debconf for automatic install or at least provide a mean to user to answer question asked by postinst script to be entered via scripts or files but no typing required. Thanks for any comment and sorry if that has already been discussed. I will support a proposal that every interaction with the user a package makes with the user during installation must be done using debconf. But this is a post-woody thing. cu Adrian -- Get my GPG key: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] | gpg --import Fingerprint: B29C E71E FE19 6755 5C8A 84D4 99FC EA98 4F12 B400
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
Adrian Bunk wrote: So could the debian policy regarding package postinst script ask either to use debconf for automatic install or at least provide a mean to user to answer question asked by postinst script to be entered via scripts or files but no typing required. Thanks for any comment and sorry if that has already been discussed. I will support a proposal that every interaction with the user a package makes with the user during installation must be done using debconf. But this is a post-woody thing. Sure. I already reduced quite a lot needed keyboard inputs using debconf in non-interactive mode. Thanks for responding. Have a nice day, -- __ / ` Eric Valette - Canon CRF /-- __ o _. Product Dev. Group Software Team Leader (___, / (_(_(__ Rue de la touche lambert 35517 Cesson-Sevigne Cedex FRANCE Tel: +33 (0)2 99 87 68 91 Fax: +33 (0)2 99 84 11 30 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.crf.canon.fr
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
Hrm, meant to send this to the lists. Oops. On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 10:28:36AM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, VALETTE Eric wrote: So far the following packages do not follow the rule : 1) lilo, 2) wu-ftpd, 3) php4-* pacakges, 4) bind 5) exim (our default MTA) I will support a proposal that every interaction with the user a package makes with the user during installation must be done using debconf. But this is a post-woody thing. If debconf isn't good enough that everyone's not using it voluntarily (lilo has been converted *from* debconf), then the obvious thing to do is to improve debconf, not try to force everyone to make their packages worse. Joey has yet more significant debconf changes waiting in the wings for after woody's release iirc, too. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Anthony Towns wrote: ... If debconf isn't good enough that everyone's not using it voluntarily (lilo has been converted *from* debconf), then the obvious thing to do is to improve debconf, not try to force everyone to make their packages worse. ... Which of these cases is true? 1. debconf misses functionality needed 2. bugs in debconf 3. it's some work to use debconf The only important thing is 1. 2. isn't really an issue because Joey Hess is really quick with fixing bugs. It's some work for a maintainer to convert a package that simply uses things like cat EOM for interaction with the user to debconf - and if the maintainer is for any reason not willing to convert his package (he might even refuse a patch) the only way to force him to make this change is when policy says he has to do it. Cheers, aj cu Adrian -- Get my GPG key: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] | gpg --import Fingerprint: B29C E71E FE19 6755 5C8A 84D4 99FC EA98 4F12 B400
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
* Adrian Bunk [EMAIL PROTECTED] [011206 03:29]: I will support a proposal that every interaction with the user a package makes with the user during installation must be done using debconf. But this is a post-woody thing. I also am willing to fight and scream for something like this post-woody. -- Scott Dier [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ringworld.org/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] So I ran up to him, and the exchange went something like this: Me: Oh my god! You're Larry Niven! Him: Oh my god! You're Wil Wheaton! -Wil Wheaton, in a Slashdot interview
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
Anthony Towns wrote: If debconf isn't good enough that everyone's not using it voluntarily (lilo has been converted *from* debconf), then the obvious thing to do is to improve debconf, not try to force everyone to make their packages worse. IIRC, the problem with lilo and debconf had little to do with debconf per se and was mainly that the new lilo configurator was very ambitious and broke a lot of systems. Joey has yet more significant debconf changes waiting in the wings for after woody's release iirc, too. Only better integration with dpkg and maybe a sql database driver some day. And perhaps sometime making it communicate with scripts via something other than stdio. -- see shy jo
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Adrian Bunk) writes: So far the following packages do not follow the rule : 4) bind For what it's worth, yesterday's upload of bind 8.2.5 eliminated the one remaining guaranteed pause for interaction on install, so it's no longer a problem. The bind9 packages have worked this way from day one. The bind package may still present warnings on upgrades, but should be completely silent on initial installs now. Bdale
Re: Should debian policy require to use debconf for postinst scripts?
On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 04:35:17PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Anthony Towns wrote: If debconf isn't good enough that everyone's not using it voluntarily (lilo has been converted *from* debconf), then the obvious thing to do is to improve debconf, not try to force everyone to make their packages worse. Which of these cases is true? 1. debconf misses functionality needed 2. bugs in debconf Consider, eg, #90676. It's some work for a maintainer to convert a package that simply uses things like cat EOM for interaction with the user to debconf - and if the maintainer is for any reason not willing to convert his package (he might even refuse a patch) the only way to force him to make this change is when policy says he has to do it. That is *completely* the wrong attitude. We're all volunteers; we're not here to be forced to do anything. Cheers, aj, wondering if he's going to have to do the must rant yet again -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Security here. Yes, maam. Yes. Groucho glasses. Yes, we're on it. C'mon, guys. Somebody gave an aardvark a nose-cut: somebody who can't deal with deconstructionist humor. Code Blue. -- Mike Hoye, see http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/armadillos.txt pgp5MwLlYDShq.pgp Description: PGP signature
