On tor, 2006-11-23 at 17:32 +0100, sean finney wrote: > > (a) the packages in question should still have (foo | bar) depends on > cmdline clients. > (b) in dbconfig-common, if the user selects an option for cmdline > clients that aren't installed, they're prompted with an error dialog, > the dbconfig-common hooks gracefully stop (or perhaps they're given a > choice to go back and choose another dbtype). > (c) if the admin later installs the required cmdline packages, they > should be able to dpkg-reconfigure the dbc-using package to use the > new > dbtype as always. >
A slightly different way would be to: - have dbconfig-common depend on "sqlite | mysql-client | postgresql-client" to make sure atleast one of the supported clients is always installed. - When package doesn't pass any $dbc_dbtypes to dbconfig-common, detect at runtime which clients are available when adding the default set of db clients, and offer only those as choices (and possibly mention what other choices could be available and how to install the required db client). - offer to safely abort, so additional db client can be installed, and then the user can restart the configuration by running "dpkg-reconfigure <package-that-uses-dbconfig-common>". That way the package that uses dbconfig-common doesn't need to depend on any specific client. There's also no possibility for the user to choose one that isn't installed, but he can still go on if he doesn't care which one is used since atleast one is always available. Sqlite would probably be a good first one in the dependency alternatives to make sure there's no problem connecting to the "server" (which would be the next step to help a clueless user, since I guess the common case is a user who runs with locally installed databases and doesn't understand that "mysql-client" is actually only "half of mysql"). Regards, Andreas Henriksson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]