[Debconf-devel] Bug#560317: dpkg-reconfigure does not set DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_PACKAGE (et al)

[Joey Hess]

I keep seeing people complain that this bug is not fixed, but every
time I look at it, I find myself unable to fix it, and with issues like
these:

* Where are these variables documented?
  (Appears that they're basically not, which makes it sorta hard to
  know that they are being set, or used, as intended.)

* How is debconf supposed to set DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_ARCH? If it has to call
  dpkg --print-architecture every time, that just makes every run slower,
  which would seem to be the opposite of the point of having such a
  variable in the first place. But it cannot be that simple anyway, with
  multiarch. What uses DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_ARCH anyway?

* What should DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_NAME be set to when the config script
  is being run?

* How is it appropriate for dpkg-maintscript-helper etc to be already using
  these variables when debconf is not yet setting them? Would it make
  more sense for dpkg-reconfigure to not set them, and
  dpkg-maintscript-helper etc to be a no-op when a package is being
  reconfigured?

* Nobody has ever addressed my concern that, if dpkg-reconfigure runs
  dpkg --configure --pending, this will result in it confusingly doing
  other things than configuring the specified package.

-- 
see shy jo
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