[Debconf-devel] Bug#501794: /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: --frontend should override DEBIAN_FRONTEND setting from environment

[Sven Joachim]

On 2008-10-10 16:10 +0100, Andreas Beckmann wrote:

> Package: debconf
> Version: 1.5.22
> Severity: normal
> File: /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure
>
> Hi,
>
> shouldn't command line settings override the environment?
> Probably not only --frontend vs. DEBIAN_FRONTEND, but for other
> parameters as well.

This is the behavior in all programs I've seen so far.

> I just ran into a problem when I wanted to manually reconfigure a
> package in a pbuilder environment (which had
> DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive set, but I didn't recognize this at
> once). Even running
>   dpkg-reconfigure --frontend foobar package
> just exited with 0. No questions were asked. No way to reconfigure even
> debconf. Every option given to --frontend was silently overridden by
> DEBIAN_FRONTEND.

AOL.  I just tried to change /bin/sh to dash in my pbuilder setup and
scratched my head why "dpkg-reconfigure dash" would not do anything,
even with the --frontend and --priority options.

> These environment variables are also not mentioned in the
> dpkg-reconfigure manpage, only in debconf(7) which is in a separate
> package debconf-doc.

And even debconf.7 does not mention that DEBIAN_FRONTEND overrides the
--frontend option, at last I found it in the Debian changelog.

Sven