I think that the "hit enter to continue" items in the postinst (along with a lot of silly config options) point at a real need which we're not addressing properly.
I think one right way of addressing that need requires dpkg (or at least postinst) support: build an installation message log. Should probably have the following fields: package name package version urgency date/time of install message urgency distinguishes between messages where not acting on the message leaves some important aspect of the package disabled and messages which are "merely informative". This folds in with the non-interactive install work which is already fairly well defined (and perhaps partially implemented?) [Presumably one could write an "interactive front end" for this log which could give the current "hit enter to continue behavior" or another front end which put these messages into a separate X widget, or emailed them to some address, or made them available for later sysadmin browsing, or ... I'm not posting this message to -policy because I don't have time to research the status of that (non-interactive install) project. However, it's probably appropriate for the -qa team to think about migration strategy: to keep down the number of existing annoyance bugs, and to keep things in hand once a better system is ready. [And, since this issue affects most people's perception of debian's quality I think this -qa list is at least moderately ok for this kind of message. Let me know if I'm way off base.] Thanks, -- Raul
