Bug#668337: mumble-django: Debconf abuse:, mumble-django/run-mumble-django-configure

[Christian PERRIER]

Quoting Michael Ziegler (diese-addy at funzt-halt.net):
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Hi,
> 
> sorry for the late reply, something must've eaten the emails regarding
> this bug report :(
> 
> Anyway, before I switched to that method, I simply displayed that
> message using an echo statement in the postinst script, but I figured
> that people might miss the notice (e.g. when installing through a
> GUI), for which case I changed it to use debconf.
> 
> I'm not quite sure how to proceed, seeing a couple of other packages
> choose the same way and the message can be suppressed using
> debconf-set-selections. If it's a policy violation, I wouldn't insist
> on keeping it, though.

Thansk for your answer, Michael, no problem for the delay.

It's not really a *policy* violation. It's mostly something that goes
against "good practices" described in the developer's reference.

In the beginning of the debconf years, many packages started using it
to display notes related to "do this" or "do that" to configure the
said packages...or warn users about specific actions to be taken.

That resulted in a lot of gripe against debconf itself because of that
possibility. And, indeed, even the debconf author himself (Joey Hess)
mentioned that he did not design debconf for that purpose.

So, since several years, we try to keep the number of debconf notes to
a very very low strict minimum and try recommending other
methods. Hence, this "debconf abuse" bug report..:-)

Still, it's left to the maintainer's decision to still keep such
debconf notes, or switch to another method (most often README.Debian,
or NEWS.Debian when the issue is related to upgrading the package).

If you prefer keeping the note, I would however recommend to work on
its writing as, at minimum the "synopsis" (the short part after
"Description:") is too long.


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-voip-maintainers/attachments/20120418/3ca36058/attachment.pgp>