Hi,

  [ X-Debbugs-Cc'ed -boot@ for debootstrap ]

today I learned that debootstrap as special code to create the file
/var/lib/dpkg/cmethopt (contents: "apt apt"); this is the function
setup_dselect_method in functions.  It seems wrong that debootstrap
has to know about such a particular detail.

Alternatives to debootstrap might also not create the file at all.

So I wonder if this could be created somewhere else.  An APT developer
said this is used by dselect and suggested to file a bug against
apt,dselect; he also had the idea that the file might be created in
dselect's postinst.

Ansgar

That code has been in debootstrap forever, at least since woody (the
oldest version on snapshot.debian.org is 0.1.17.7woody1).  I suspect
back in the days this was actually useful, but nowadays rather few
people actually use dselect, and debootstrap should stop creating
/var/lib/dpkg/cmethopt.

Makes sense, although dselect happily starts without that file; the
admin would have to select an install method and had better know that
they should choose "apt" from the list, but people willingly using
dselect probably can be expected to know what they are doing.

Removing /var/lib/dpkg/cmethopt when dselect is purged seems also
logical to me.

Cheers,
       Sven

This is related to
<https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/Spec/InstallBootstrap>. The
problem is that dselect conflates the selection of its access method
with its configuration, so when you choose the apt access method it
will try to reconfigure apt, which is annoying because debootstrap
already did configure it. So it does make sense to me that given that
debootstrap configured apt as the system access/download method it
would notify dselect of this fact, and not require the user to do
this again.

But I do agree that this is an internal implementation detail, and
deboostrap should be provided with a better interface.

I guess that's another option, yes.

I think dselect could get its access method selection split from
its configuration, maybe supporting something similar to the
alternatives system with auto/manual mode and priorities, etc.

Or perhaps the better option, is to switch its access method
configuration to use something like apt's sources.list format.

Right, I'll do that right away.

Thanks,
Guillem

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