Adept 3 missing details option in updater

[Scott Kitterman]

Binary package hint: adept

It's not there. This can make it very difficult for Adept users to troubleshoot problems and in some cases will make packages unupgradeable. If debconf asks a question, it doesn't appear there is a way to answer it. This is a regression from Adept 2.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Adept isn't using a terminal kpart to present debconf questions, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it can't ask the questions at all. ;-)
Adept 3 seems to display the message on directly the application background, with pushbuttons, etc to get feedback from the user. An example of this is installing java, which uses debconf to present the user with a license agreement.

Adept 3 does, however, fail to present debconf questions concerning configuration files that new packages bring. (Replace or keep old one) Currently Adept just takes the default route and keeps the old one. I don't know the seriousness of the implications of this behavior however. I think we discussed this on IRC and you said it was quite serious...

Anyway, at the least we should ask upstream to implement a way to answer prompts for config file changes, or implement them ourselves for upstream. We should also probably consider other debconf questions and see how Adept3 handles them.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Due to this bug I ended up with an old, non-functional akonadi apparmor profile, so it caused a security issue.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Works now, but "Show details" is a reasonable feature to want.

[Benjamin Kay (benkay)]

Indeed, the upstream fix only deals with the configuration issue. Adept is still missing a terminal kpart as of 3.0~beta4ubuntu3. This is a problem not only for interaction with debconf, but also for communicating status information with the user.

For example, suppose Bob is installing msttcorefonts. The package will download fonts from the Internet during installation, which could take a long time. Bob may wonder why installation appears to be "frozen". If Bob could see the terminal output, he would be able to see wget downloading the fonts from the Internet.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Unfortunately, Adept has been unmaintained by its original authors for several years, and nobody has stepped up to continue its development. (Though the Muon Suite is arguably its spiritual successor) As such, Adept has been removed from releases of Kubuntu from 12.10 onwards, and no additional improvements will be made to the software.

We thank you for reporting this bug all the same, and apologize for taking so long to respond to it.