[Freedombox-discuss] How do we handle package upgrades on the Freedombox?

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Sunil Mohan (2014-04-16 20:12:33)
> On Tuesday 15 April 2014 03:35 AM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> [...]
> > When Plinth directly edits configuration files, it is an 
> > administrators' tool.
> > 
> > Solution is to have Plinth only ever communicate with debconf!
> 
> I can see that many uses cases for configuration can be done in this 
> manner. However, I could not picture debconf fitting well in other 
> cases. How are the following use cases likely to work?

Sorry - I can see how my writing above can be unclear.  Let me try 
again:

Solution is to have Plinth only ever change configuration of other 
Debian packages with debconf!

Yes, Plinth should also communicate with...

  * the user (via web pages)
  * hardware (via library calls or custom code)
  * system (best via Debian APIs like "service apache2 status")


> I apologize in advance if these are repeated questions as I am unaware 
> of the previous discussions on the matter.

Not at all.  Thanks!


> If automatic upgrading of packages over stable releases is our primary 
> concern would it not be easier to ship a configuration upgrade tool 
> that respects the administrators configuration and interprets it in 
> context of newer version of the software? The pagekite author wrote on 
> such tool to handle automatic upgrade during major configuration 
> change. Using utilities like augeus reduce the effort in writing such 
> tools.

Right.

Name is Augeas.  Here's my post about that at the dawn of this list: 
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2010-September/000079.html

I suspect nothing has changed in that area since then - or since 2012 
where I commented on its actual use in Debian: 
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2012-February/003399.html

I recommend reading the threads, not only those two emails.

NB!  Beware that there's a difference between what is sensible for an 
administrator to do (and therefore for most upstream software authors to 
invent of supportive tools) and what is sensible for a package to do.


 - Jonas

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

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