Bug#971438: Debconf variable names not "automation friendly"

[Dominik Rimpf]

Background, why this bothered me:
I manage a lot of servers an virtual machines at an university datacenter with ansible.
My workflow to write new roles for software we want to deploy is to install the package and then run "debconf-show $package" to see all used
variables by this package and preseed them within my ansible-role. I don't know if there are more possible "easy" ways to get more
information about the shown variables but thats where i got the varname from. The information how they are used i extracted from the
control/config and control/templates file of the .deb package. Is there a way to get more information about a variable aside "debconf-show"?

On 30.09.20 18:39, Ryan Tandy wrote:
> Control: tag -1 moreinfo
> 
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 06:06:59PM +0200, Dominik Rimpf wrote:
>> I spend the last hour to understand what the debconf variables „password1“ and „password2“ are for.
>> Now I know that they’re just for password-confirmation, so I would like to suggest to make this clear in the variable names.
>> I would propose to change the variable-names to „admin_password“ (for „password1“) and „admin_password_confirm“ (for „password2“).
>> That would make it easier to understand directly what the variables are meant for.
> 
> I don't disagree with this, but if I change the names, then it breaks things for anyone who is already preseeding or scripting this.
> 
> I assume you're getting the list of variables from slapd.templates? Is there anything I could add or change in the Description field of
> these variables that would make things more clear?


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