[Debconf-devel] Bug#396147: issue with noninteractive selects and debconf passhrough

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 11:56:12PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> #379198 turns out to be due to a bug in the passthrough frontend, when
> used with debconf-apt-progress to install gdm. This happens:
> 
> debconf (developer): <-- METAGET shared/default-x-display-manager owners
> debconf (developer): --> 0 gdm
> debconf (developer): <-- METAGET shared/default-x-display-manager choices
> debconf (developer): --> 0 
> debconf (developer): <-- SUBST shared/default-x-display-manager choices gdm
> debconf (developer): --> 0
> debconf (developer): <-- FSET shared/default-x-display-manager seen false
> debconf (developer): --> 0 false
> debconf (developer): <-- INPUT high shared/default-x-display-manager
> debconf (developer): Not displaying select list shared/default-x-display-manager with 1 choice
> debconf (developer): --> 30 question skipped
> debconf (developer): <-- GO
> debconf (developer): --> 0 ok
> debconf (developer): <-- GET shared/default-x-display-manager
> debconf (developer): --> 0
> 
> The noninteractive select list handling should make the value be the
> first item on the list, "gdm", but this doesn't happen. So this bug
> could affect more than gdm; the reported but never really tracked down
> issues with wordlist selection questions could also be caused by this.
> 
> I came up with the attached patch, which I've tested to work, and which
> seems to make perfect sense to me..

Looks entirely correct to me, and I'm glad you spotted that. Not sure
why I did it this way to begin with; it's possible I simply hadn't quite
got the hang of debconf's object model yet.

This could also explain #393427, although I think the workaround (adding
a Default) was correct anyway.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at debian.org]