Wichert Akkerman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > > Previously Mikolaj J. Habryn wrote: > > o Changing packages to interface to a configuration layer rather > > than just the user. > > > > This one is fairly simple, right? Does anyone have a problem with > > dpkg-question or dpkg-config or whatever being used to do *all* user > > interaction? Is there any situation that cannot be covered by the use > > of 'dpkg-config variablename' and arbitrary data about variablename > > being provided elsewhere? > > Wrong. dpkg-question is evil in that it only allows you to answer a > single question at a time. That is silly of course, and it makes lots of > sense to group questions together and ask them all at once in a single > screen/dialog/webpage/whatever.
dpkg-question doesn't prevent that. Each deb file could contain a "preconfig" script that launches a series of dpkg-questions. All answeres are then saved by dpkg-question to a database or config file. Sometime later the postinst is run and get all its information form the database or the config file. The GUI behind dpkg-question should work like a pipe. dpkg-question just stuffs the questions in there and get answeres back. The GUI itself doesn't have to quit itself after each question. No closing and reopening of windows is neccessarry. > Also another *very* important aspect is that we can change the degree of > interactivity of the install. Did you see how many people were > complaining on debian-devel a while ago about all the interactivity? > It's really horrible if you are managing things like clusters or > labrooms. Most users also don't care about most questions. dpkg-question must be given a level and a default. If the Level of the question is too low to bother the user, take the default (except when a answere is already present from last time, which then would be the default). > > o Making a more flexible configuration language that will simplify > > the task of making configuration scripts. > > That isn't planned at all. Bash scripts should be fine for that. > > I have a certain amount of experience with jumping headlong into > > huge projects. > > We started this discussion back in may actually, so you can't say we're > jumping into this.. But it got a lot hotter in the last weeks. :) > Wichert. May the Source be with you. Goswin