Re: [OT] Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Arch hooks

[Andrew Suffield]

On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 05:06:18PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>     >> It took years to get the "diff" option added to the debconf
>     >> stuff;
> 
>     Andrew> Don't know what you're referring to.
> 
> Whatever it is that when it installs a new config file allows you to
> look at a diff between what you have on disk and what dpkg wants to
> install, before it does anything.

Ah, that's a dpkg feature. Yes, getting new features added to dpkg is
difficult; it is probably only surpassed by rpm in its
unmaintainability. The number of people who dare to work on it is very
small.

>     >> OTOH, that "if you use xinetd you'll have to port by hand"
>     >> message has been there for a year or more.  I can live with
>     >> that.
> 
>     Andrew> Is that a message displayed using debconf? Sounds like a
>     Andrew> complete waste of time, what's it from?
> 
> Since you ask ... hm ... it's boilerplate from /usr/sbin/update-inetd,
> displayed directly by the script.

Ah, just a console message that doesn't need a response. Well, that's
not so bad. There was some discussion a few months back about how best
to make the inetd stuff sane, but nobody implemented anything yet.

> [On kneecapping bletcherous config scripts]
> 
>     Andrew> That should make it go away. There's usually a way, you
>     Andrew> just have to know where to kick stuff.
> 
>     >> And how is someone who hasn't worked on debconf supposed to
>     >> know?
> 
>     Andrew> dpkg-divert is part of dpkg, a pretty fundamental
>     Andrew> component to a
> 
> Sure.  But how am I supposed to know it's _safe_?  Maybe instead of
> diverting to /bin/true I should divert to /bin/false?

Hell, I don't really know it's "safe" either. Try it and see? >:)

All it does is supposed to be to modify the apache config files, so
splicing it out should just mean you'll have to fix your config files
by hand.

>     Andrew> debhelper, which I presume you are referring to, is a
>     Andrew> suite of tools to aid Debian developers in creating
>     Andrew> packages.  It has an excellent set of manpages; looking at
>     Andrew> the code is not necessary unless you're trying to add a
>     Andrew> feature,
> 
> Or fix something that's broken, or understand why the behavior you see
> doesn't look like what's in the manpage.  I was having a problem with
> "debian/rules binary" for Coda, and ended up removing the binary-indep
> dependency from binary.  Never did figure out why the build broke when
> it got to the empty binary-indep target.

I don't really think the package build processes can be made much more
transparent than they already are - ultimately, it's just a
complicated problem. This sounds like a case where the right answer is
"ask the mailing list and/or maintainers".

>     Andrew> Also, you asked for this. You said "yes" when it asked if
>     Andrew> you wanted to generate a config file this way.
> 
> You're darn right I asked for it; in fact, I very carefully moved *my*
> XF86Config out of the way so dexconf would have a clear field to play
> in.  (I've been doing this for years when I see X about to be upgraded.)
> 
> But it turns out I was missing the hardware detection prerequisites.
> I'll have to check if that's somehow something I did, or is a bug.
> (IMHO, the config process should check for those and bitch if you
> don't have them, like "maybe you really don't want me to just guess".)

They're mentioned in the xserver-xfree86 package description and
somewhere in the documentation in xfree86-common. They're also in the
Suggests field for xserver-xfree86. It has been a goal that nobody
should be forced to use hardware detection, so they aren't installed
automatically. (It's worth noting that merely installing discover
should get you fairly decent hardware detection for all the PnP
devices in your system)

I guess it's not implausible that the debconf stuff could throw a "Do
you *really* want to do this?" warning.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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