Previously Tom Rothamel wrote: > The problem I have is that dpkg keeps on prompting me as to the > disposition of config files I have changed. Don't get me wrong, I like > the fact that it asks me what to do... I just wish it would do it at > the start, and proceed cleanly through the upgrade without further > prompting. dpkg can't do that anyway if you use apt since apt does multiple dpkg runs. > - When apt runs to upgrade packages, it will call a new program (which > I plan to write) in the same way that it calls > dpkg-preconfigure. TNP would scan the list of upgraded packages, > looking for config files. (This scan could go rather fast, as it > only looks at config files, rather than having to unpack the > whole thing.) Where it finds changed config files (using the same > rules as dpkg) it will add them to a list. It's rather slow, since you need to unpack the .deb to get the md5sums for its conffiles, read /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list to see if a conffiles still belongs to a package, /var/lib/dpkg/status to get the previous md5sums, etc. Oh, and you're not really allowed to use things in /var/lib/dpkg/ directly anyway since the format might change. (Warning in advance: it will likely change this year). Oh, and you still loose if people don't use apt. > - Once the file is being appropriately created, dpkg will be modified > to optionally take as an argument to an option the name of the well > known file. Okay, just to warn you: a) I'm really anal about patches I accept for dpkg. b) I'm not sure I like this approach. c) I'm really anal about accepting patches. > This, along with debconf and a program like debecho (which doesn't > exist, but if it did would allow logging of informational messages to > a file) would allow for unattended installations and upgrades, after > the initial Q&A session. I think that would be a real good thing to > have, especially if we don't lose flexability when it happens. There is already a patch to make dpkg log things using syslog. At some point I'ld like to generalize that, but we can't do that until debconf is used everywhere. Woody+2 I think. > I'd also like to know if there's a preferred textui toolkit for use > during installs/upgrades, or if I should just roll my own. debconf > I've decided to work on this rather than bettering ddiff integration > because this is something that can work stand-alone to better the user > experience, while ddiff will require new or different archives to > achive maximum usefulness. (Ie, the diffs have to be stored > somewhere.) Right, which is why it's on the TODO-list for dpkg. I hope to have this done in woody. > Lastly, is there a more appropriate list than debian-devel for > announcing projects like this? debian-dpkg and debian-admintool. Wichert. -- ________________________________________________________________ / Generally uninteresting signature - ignore at your convenience \ | wichert@liacs.nl http://www.liacs.nl/~wichert/ | | 1024D/2FA3BC2D 576E 100B 518D 2F16 36B0 2805 3CB8 9250 2FA3 BC2D |
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