Seriously! Eliminate nagging at installation time?

[Norbert Nemec <nobbi@cheerful.com>]

Seems, my message was ignored completely. Maybe it didn't sound serious
enough, but I think it really is a topic that should be talked about. IMO,
this is about one of the major drawbacks of the Debian installation process,
and, what is more, it is not a bug in dpkg that will be obsolete with the
upcoming version of dpkg. It is independant and should be though about
separately. Would be nice, if you could, either flame me to drop the topic
or give some real opinions about it. Thanks.

On Wed, Jun 30, 1999 at 07:54:30PM +0200, I wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I'm sure that topic has been brought up several times before or is even
> being worked on somewhere or actively discussed on one of the many lists, 
> but after the experience yesterday, I just have to cry out loud:
> 
> Is there no way to have installations of a large nmber of packages to be 
> completed without interaction? I just wanted to upgrade a older system from 
> hamm to slink. About everything in the process goes automatically and works
> fine, but once the dpkg starts installing and setting up the packages yo
> have to sit in front of the machine to answer a stupid question every 
> minute. You can't leave the room without knowing that the installation
> process will soon hang again.
> 
> How about eliminating interactivity completely from postinst & Co.? The
> package should just choose the way that will cause the least harm and put a
> message into a log which is less-ed automatically at the end of the process.
> In that log, only really important messages should go, so the user knows it
> is a good idea going through them. It does not need to show what has gone OK.
> Wrinting to that log should be handled about as carefully as interaction i
> handled right now.
> 
> In that log you would find messages like 
> "/etc/someconfig" has changed, put new version in "/etc/someconfig.dpkg-dist"
> or
> <package> has not been configured yet. Run ... before use.
> and alike. That would also give a much better alternative for warnings.
> Right now, warnings within postinst & Co. either need a <Return> (How
> annoying!) or they get lost in the large number of messages.
> 
> Ciao,
> Nobbi

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