Bug#1040216: cdebconf: confmodule: Erranous behaviour if IFS does not start with a space during db_*
Package: cdebconf Version: 0.270 Tags: patch Dear cdebconf maintainers, in confmodule, the command arguments are passed to cdebconf via IFS=' ' printf "%s\n" "$*" That command-local assignment of IFS affects the way printf works, but not the way in which "$*" is expanded by the shell: "$*" will be still expanded using the IFS of the calling shell. Example of this fault behavior: $ dash -c 'IFS="."; set -- a b c; IFS=" " printf "%s\n" "$*"' a.b.c. This means that any db_foo command will fail if the calling shell's IFS does not start with a space, e.g. `IFS=$'\n'; while read foo; do ... do_foo ...; done`. A patch to fix this this issue is available at https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/cdebconf/-/merge_requests/20 (extracted from https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/cdebconf/-/merge_requests/19) Regards, -- Gioele Barabucci
Bug#1040224: cdebconf: confmodule cannot be sourced by scripts that use `set -u`
Package: cdebconf Version: 0.270 Tags: patch Dear cdebconf maintainers, cdebconf's `confmodule` cannot be sourced by scripts that turned on strict variable handling via `set -u`, similarly to what is reported in #369953 for classic debconf. A patch to fix this this problem can be found at https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/cdebconf/-/merge_requests/21 (extracted from https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/cdebconf/-/merge_requests/19). Regards -- Gioele Barabucci
Bug#1006491: console-setup should depend on debconf-2.0
Package: console-setup Version: 1.207 Tags: patch Version 1.207 of console-setup and of keyboard-configuration hard-(pre-)depend on debconf. This makes transitioning to cdebconf not possible. console-setup and keyboard-configuration should depend on debconf | debconf-2.0 just like console-setup-mini. Patch: https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/console-setup/-/merge_requests/11 Regards, -- Gioele Barabucci
Bug#1006492: cdebconf should not depend on debconf
Package: cdebconf Version: 0.260 In 2007 cdebconf has been "temporarily" made to depend on debconf «to avoid anyone breaking their systems by removing debconf, which dependencies now allow». [1] Now, 15 years and various Debian releases later, all packages in the base system depend on some variation of `debconf | debconf-2.0`. This hard-dependence can now be removed. [1] https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/cdebconf/-/commit/b4dfa070d676917f12f58cc52fe46fe2f4094fc3 Regards -- Gioele Barabucci
Success in using cdebconf alone to bootstrap VMs
Dear debconf and cdebconf maintainers, you probably have seen the bugs reports [1] and the MRs [2,3] that I recently opened related to the creation and the use of `debconf-common`. With these changes [4,5,6] applied (and a few unrelated changes) I have been able to mmdebootstrap a number of VMs in which classic debconf is not used at all, neither at installation time nor afterward. I'm confident that a debconf-free unstable for base systems could be achieved before the freeze with little effort. [1] https://bugs.debian.org/1018261 [2] https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-debconf/debconf/-/merge_requests/11 [3] https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/cdebconf/-/merge_requests/17 [4] https://salsa.debian.org/gioele/debconf/-/commits/debconf-common-pkg [5] https://salsa.debian.org/gioele/cdebconf/-/commits/depend-debconf-common [6] https://salsa.debian.org/gioele/cdebconf/-/commits/independence -- Gioele Barabucci
Bug#1026858: Dependency on debconf dropped prematurely
Thanks Faidon for your analysis and Cyril for forwarding this bug report to me. On Thu, 22 Dec 2022 23:06:05 +0100 Cyril Brulebois wrote: Faidon Liambotis (2022-12-22): > Going forward there are a few options: > * Revert the change and depend on debconf again. This is the safest > option, as this has been the status quo since 2007. That would look good to me. As the original reporter of #1006492 and the author of the MR that removed that dependency, I agree [1] that, at the moment, the best course of action is to revert that change and re-instate cdebconf's dependency on debconf. That removal was part of a bigger plan [2] whose execution got stuck [3] and will be resumed only post-freeze. Regards, [1] https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/cdebconf/-/merge_requests/15#note_344632 [2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2022/08/msg00135.html [3] https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-debconf/debconf/-/merge_requests/11 -- Gioele Barabucci
Bug#1087959: cdebconf: Consider using the standard dh sequence in d/rules
Package: src:cdebconf Version: 0.273 Severity: wishlist Tags: patch Dear cdebconf maintainers, this package currently uses debhelper with an ad-hoc sequence of steps in d/rules. This long list of steps can be shortened and greatly simplified by using the standard dh sequence. You can find a MR that changes `d/rules` to use the standard dh sequence at: https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/cdebconf/-/merge_requests/23 According to diffoscope, the generated binary packages are identical to the current ones. -- Gioele Barabucci
Bug#1092949: debian-installer could propose installing linux-image-cloud when run inside a VM
Package: debian-installer Version: 20241227 Dear debian-installer developers, currently d-i installs `linux-image-$arch` regardless of the kind of machine it is installed on. When used inside a virtual machine, it could make sense to ask the user if they want to install linux-image-cloud-$arch instead, as it comes with a reduced set of modules and dependencies and fits better the needs of modern VMs. Detecting whether d-i is running inside virtualized environment could be done using `systemd-detect-virt` or `dmidecode --string processor-manufacturer`. Regards, -- Gioele Barabucci
