Logcheck devel - Sep 2006 - Bug#388924: logcheck: [annoying_notes] Abuse of debconf note(s)

Package: logcheck
Version: N/A
Severity: normal

Hello,

As announced in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/09/msg00630.html, this bug
report is part of a mass bug filing campaign about the "abuse" of
debconf templates of type "note".

First of all, in case you fixed you package in the short timeframe
that happned between my announcement and this bug report, please
accept my apologies and, of course, feel free to ask me to close the
bug report...or just close it yourself.

One or more template(s) has/have been identified in logcheck 
debconf templates and an automated analysis mentions that it/they is/are
displayed to users at low or medium priority.

The debconf-devel(7) manpage makes it clear that the "note" type
should
be used only for important notes that the user really should see.

On the other hand, the "low" priority is meant for very trivial items
that have defaults that will work in the vast majority of
cases. The "medium" priority is meant for normal items
that have reasonable defaults.

As such, a note should only be used for IMPORTANT stuff, so actually
all debconf notes should be priority high....or should not exist.

Please consider one of the following options:

- move the text of the debconf note to the README.Debian file. The drawback
  is that the text will not be translatable anymore, which will be worked
  in the future. However, given that your note is very rarely displayed,
  this is indeed not a very strong drawback

- move the text to NEWS.Debian. This option should however rather be
  reserved for future texts of the same kind as the contents of this file
  is only displayed when users upgrade the package

- change the template type to "error" in case this note is meant to be
  displayed only in some cases when a problem shows up during execution of
  the maintainer's scripts. Please check debconf-devel(7) for details

- raise the priority to "high". This should be the last option to
consider.
  It should be used only in cases where you judge that the information you
  display is VITAL for users of your package and that one could NOT USE IT
  if not reading the note.

A dedicated check will be proposed to the lintian and linda package
maintainers so that future uses of low and medium priority note
templates will be discouraged in the future. So, if you wish you
package to be lintian-clean, then you need to fix this..:-)


Template(s) identified in your package:

  logcheck -- config:14 logcheck/install-note
  logcheck -- config:17 logcheck/changes

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.17-2-686
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL
set to fr_FR.UTF-8)

Re: Christian Perrier 2006-09-23 <20060923060155.6662.58958.reportbug at
mykerinos.kheops.frmug.org>
> One or more template(s) has/have been identified in logcheck 
> debconf templates and an automated analysis mentions that it/they is/are
> displayed to users at low or medium priority.
> 
> The debconf-devel(7) manpage makes it clear that the "note" type
should
> be used only for important notes that the user really should see.
Seconded, I just went "wtf" when I saw the logcheck/install-note
debconf message at medium level.

I see the bug is already tagged pending, it'd be nice to see this
fixed in Etch.

Thanks for your work,
Christoph
-- 
cb at df7cb.de | http://www.df7cb.de/
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