James R. Van Zandt writes ("Re: Proposal: Automatic query servicing for dpkg
installation scripts"):
>
...
> I suggest that we need, primarily, three things:
>
> 1) The package installer should be able to get configuration
> information from several places:
> - a same-host database
> - a database on a specified host
> - default answers supplied with the package
> - from the sysadmin (interactive)
The way I see this working is that there is only one per-host local
database, but you preload it with the information you want before you
start the installation. That way databases from other hosts and
things like that are just special kinds of preloading.
The choice between prompting or using the default or existing answer
needs to be done at potential-query-time, for sure, but I think the
scheme I proposed earlier will suffice. Let me explain it again:
When you call the get-answer-to-question program the caller (ie the
package maintainer) specifies how important it is to ask the question,
and what the default is (or that there is none).
There are two environment variables: one is used when there is no
answer in the database, and specifies what the minimum importance of
question which will be asked is - this is used to control the level of
prompting for new installations. If the user is asked the question
and answers it the answer is saved for later.
The other variable is used when there _is_ an answer in the database,
and can be used to force questions which were asked ans answered
previously to be asked again. Again, this is a `minimum importance of
question to be asked'.
Ian.
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