[Freedombox-discuss] debconf is the only way...

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Nick Daly (2013-09-03 16:24:38)
> On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 4:57 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
> > Quoting Tim Retout (2013-09-03 09:31:20)
> >> The debian-edu project handles more complex configuration using 
> >> cfengine - if they found it necessary, I suspect this project will. 
> >> (I believe Petter might know more about this than me.)
> >
> > Goal of Debian Edu is minimizing system administration to 1 hour per 
> > week (or some such number).  FreedomBox must have *zero* 
> > administration.
> >
> > Therefore I see debconf as the *only* possibility we have: Debian 
> > package maintainers *must* support the configurations that we need 
> > for FreedomBox, as there are noone else between them and the 
> > (non-technical!) user.
> 
> Jonas, I wish you had made that clarification years ago.

Well, "years ago" (august 2010) I wrote this:
> The only proper way for a reliably maintained 
> Debian->deployer->sysadmin chain as I see it, is for debconf to be 
> improved to handle reliably other package maintainance tasks than 
> install.

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2010-August/000074.html

...and (september 2010) this:
> My preaching is to work *with* Debian instead of *on* *top* *of* 
> Debian.
>
> And my belif - argued in more detail in other posts of this thread - 
> is that the only sane approach is to use debconf, and enhance debconf.

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2010-September/000115.html

...and numerous posts posts to 24 threads in this mailinglist over the 
years, preaching debconf as then IMO only sane approach.


> FWIW, I think you're right, which makes me a little bit sad, because 
> the FreedomBoxiness of a particular package then becomes yet another 
> unfunded mandate on upstream's or the packager's time (it starts to 
> sound like SPDX).  That's a hard bargain, socially.  Nonetheless, it 
> does seem to validate the approach of experimenting with the system to 
> see what configuration options are actually required.  This is why the 
> TODO list has all the packaging and configuration steps in the 2.0 
> release: so we can poke at the system before asking devs to implement 
> features or accept patches.

I am excited that you agree with me (but puzzled what makes you sad).

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that we should play with configurations, to 
help decide what we then want to try convince Debian developers to 
implement debconf hooks for in their official Debian packages:

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2010-October/000164.html


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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