[Pkg-wpa-devel] Re: Bug#353530: Several package enhancements, fixing some flaws in maintainer scripts

On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 10:18:52PM +1000, Kel Modderman wrote:
 
> I interigated the svn working copy (revision 50 of pkg-wpa) just now.
> 
> 01_install-changelog-improvement.patch
> Resending the patch to install the upstream changelog properly, it 
> requires less code, and you don't have to clean it up with a mv command.

I tried that before, but it didn't do what I expected. lintian throws me
a warning that the Upstream changelog was not correctly named. I will
recheck this.

> I really do not understand what you are doing with the init script. Why 
> even bother to install it to /etc/init.d/ when it is not even registered 
> with update-rc.d? Why install it manually? (dh_installinit probably does 
> not like installing it there without calling update-rc.d perhaps) Would 
> /usr/sbin not be a more appripriate place? Won't this permanently change 
> the way debian-users use this package?

This needs to be documented in debian/NEWS, you're right. Here is the
short version:

Actually, we don't that init script at all. It should not be called at
boot time. wpasupplicant should be started from
/etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant, which just starts init.d. Daniel
wanted to keep the init script at /etc/init.d, because some people are
using it as pre-up in /etc/network/interfaces, so we don't break their
systems at once. Personally, I'm not too convinced about that, and am
inclined to break their systems now, with dropping
/etc/init.d/wpasupplicant at once, and integrating that functionality in
the pre-up and post-down hooks directly.

The current plan is to make this deprecated and move
/etc/init.d/wpasupplicant out of the way completely later.
 
> Also, the lintian override file is growing!
right. Currently there are 2 overrides:
- the multiple call of update-rc.d are needed to ensure different upgrade
paths. 
- the not registered init script is explained above.

> In the postinst script, all the symlinks in runlevels are purged, but 
> then invoke-rc.d starts wpasupplicant, why?

Future Upgrade paths: /etc/init.d/wpasupplicant is started by
/etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant. So if the user has a wpa
connection, it is started in postinst.

> Can you please explain a little about how the end user will use this 
> package now? What is the rough roadmap for this package (planned future 
> changes)? Maybe then I will understand the current changes better, and 
> can begin helping you with them instead of asking a million questions :-)

As said, the plan is to move away wpasupplicant as system service. It
should be called via if-pre-up.d and stopped in if-post-down.d. Perhaps
we should also allow config files per interface in
/etc/wpasupplicant/$INTERFACE?

That way you could run different configuration on different interfaces.
Plus, upgrades will become easier. We could remove
/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, and let the user install a template from
/usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/examples/config.template to 
/etc/wpasupllicant/$INTERFACE, maybe debconf driven (so that this
becomes preseedable for easy cases like WPA_PSK).

Daniel, what do you think about this?

Kel, thank you for your patches. How about asking Kyle for adding you to
the pkg-wpa group, so that you can commit directly?

regards,
	Reinhard