Socket-activated PackageKit debconf helper in eoan

Julian Andres Klode julian.klode at canonical.com
Fri May 24 12:16:40 UTC 2019


Hi folks,

I just switched the debconf helper in eoan that shows prompts
in PackageKit to be run as a socket-activated service. Now,
it's time to do some testing.

So please, install some packages using DebConf (after starting
the helper, see caveats), and monitor the journalctl --user-unit pk-debconf-helper.service

Also, aptdaemon makes use of that same helper now instead
of using its own; but you might need to restart aptd to ensure
that it sees the pk-debconf socket.

PS. aptdaemon test suite is passing again, and python2 support is gone

Versions:

* packagekit >=  1.1.12-5ubuntu3
* aptdaemon >=  1.1.1+bzr982-0ubuntu22

Caveats:

* Reboot after upgrading, re-login, or manually do
  systemctl --user start pk-debconf-helper.socket to start
  the socket in systemd (we can't autostart user services on install...)

* Only works on GNOME I guess. KDE is using its own special thing

Change of behavior:

* aptdaemon now always defaults to the pk-debconf helper, even if no
  debconf frontend has been set (previously it would fall back to whiptail
  and get stuck). It's not possible to change the frontend if the packagekit
  helper socket exists.

Future work:

* The helper just copies data between a socket and a debconf-communicate pipe
  - we can get rid of it once debconf-communicate can handle sockets itself
    - gotta investigate that
-- 
debian developer - deb.li/jak | jak-linux.org - free software dev
ubuntu core developer                              i speak de, en



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