On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 02:06:20AM -0800, Chris Waters wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 05:12:12PM -0600, Drew Scott Daniels wrote:
> > On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Chris Waters wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 02:06:05PM -0600, Drew Scott Daniels wrote:
> ...
>
> --- policy.sgml~ 2003-03-13 02:02:23.000000000 -0800
> +++ policy.sgml 2003-03-13 02:01:43.000000000 -0800
> @@ -1083,11 +1083,13 @@
> <heading>Prompting in maintainer scripts</heading>
> <p>
> Package maintainer scripts may prompt the user if
> - necessary. Prompting may be accomplished by hand, or by
> - communicating with a program, such as
> - <prgn>debconf</prgn>, which conforms to the Debian
> - Configuration management specification, version 2 or
> - higher. These are included in the
> + necessary. Prompting may be accomplished by writing to
> + standard output and reading from standard input, but
> + this technique is deprecated. Otherwise, prompting must
> + be accomplished by using a program - such as
> + <prgn>debconf</prgn> - which conforms to the Debian
> + Configuration Management Specification, version 2 or
> + higher. These are included in the
> <file>debconf_specification</file> files in the
> <package>debian-policy</package> package.
> You may also find this file on the FTP site
>
>
Two other grammar nits still in this paragraph:
1. It says that the _programs_ which are debconf-like are inside
the specification. Obviously a typo.
2. It says that debconf must comply with the specification, or
the debconf-using package has a serious bug. But if a package
uses a specification-compliant program in a way that is not at
all compliant (i.e. uses it in some other way) it is ok with the
policy.
How about this (sorry, it is a bit longish, please find a way to
shorten the text, I always tend to write too long and complex
sentences).
<heading>Prompting in maintainer scripts</heading>
<p>
Package maintainer scripts may prompt the user if
- necessary. Prompting may be accomplished by hand, or by
- communicating with a program, such as
- <prgn>debconf</prgn>, which conforms to the Debian
- Configuration management specification, version 2 or
- higher. These are included in the
+ necessary. Prompting may be accomplished by
+ writing to standard output and reading from
+ standard input, but this technique is deprecated.
+ Otherwise, prompting must be accomplished by using
+ the debconf system in a way which conforms to the
+ Debian Configuration Management Specification,
+ version 2 or higher. One implementation is the
+ <prgn>debconf</prgn>, but there are others being
+ developed, so it is recommended that packages
+ avoid any features not in the official
+ specification. The specification can be found in
+ the
<file>debconf_specification</file> files in the
<package>debian-policy</package> package.
You may also find this file on the FTP site
Just trying to be helpful.
Jakob
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