[Debconf-devel] Bug#546711: Missleading dialogue text

[Christian Meyer]

Package: debconf
Version: 1.5.27
Severity: critical

Usually the severity of a bug like this would be "wishlist" to "minor" (since it isn't really a bug at all) but if a programm leads the user to wrong decissions and other software is affected (important conf-files are overriden = data loss) its critical.
http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities 
If you disagree with it (or its only a problem in the german translation), please feel free to change severity.

I usually use Synaptic but I think the problem is related to debconf since the window-title said so.
Debconf uses to interact with the user on package upgrade if there are modified configuration-files. In my case I modified /etc/default/grub before and debconf aks if I want to keep my modified conf-file or if I want to install the maintainers version.

But the message box really is missunderstandable (at least in german - I don't know how to display or read the message in english):
It says:
"Konfiguriere grub.pc
Wie wollen Sie mit grub verfahren?
  aktuell installierte Version behalten
  ...
  Version des Paket-Betreuers installieren"

which means in english (my poor translation):
"configuring grub.pc
What do you want to to with grub?
  keep installed Version
  ...
  install version of package-maintainer"

Of course now I know that debconf means the file /etc/default/grub, but the very first time it happened, I thought that debconf means the _package_ "grub" (since I know the package name - I didn't remember the conffile name)and I choosed "install version of package-maintainer" because I wanted to update to the current version of grub.
So its really bad because my modified conf-file is lost (in case of grub it is even worse).

Please change the message text to something like "What do you want to happen to the conffile /etc/default/grub" or at least otherwise make clear that debconf means the conffile and not the whole package. 

Christian Meyer

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