[Debconf-devel] debconf making package removal fail because of warnings issues by an earlier called program (in postrm)

[Daniel Leidert]

Am Mittwoch, den 29.10.2008, 23:21 +0100 schrieb Frans Pop:
> Right. This is getting somewhat beyond my knowledge of debconf internals, 
> but here is what happens.
> 
> Daniel Leidert wrote:
[..]
> The full debug log and the sourced confmodule file fairly clearly show 
> what happens.

First thanks for your explanation. I will read it carefully. Just let me
ask something about this statement:

[..]
> So, the automatic snippets work fine as long as they are the sole content 
> of a maintainer script, but if not they need to be properly wrapped. And
> use of stdin/stdout is not allowed _anywhere_ in the script, even if it 
> happens before debconf gets sourced (which is why for D-I we always 
> source confmodule at the top of scripts).

The policy states, that output by maintainer scripts and programs called
in maintainer scripts "should" be avoided (3.9). There is no "must".
Maybe you refer to prompting (3.9.1)? IMHO there can be many reasons,
why a program may issue a note or a warning to STDOUT and except
redirecting everything to /dev/null or STDERR we cannot make sure, that
there is no output. So I think, that debconf needs a fix here.

> Maybe not intuitive, but that's life. And again, don't ask me why.

I agree, that this is not intuitive.

> /me suspects this may be cause for some nice mass-filing of RC bugs :-(

@debconf devs: A chance to fix this in debconf?

Regards, Daniel