Debconf asks to choose from one option

[Tero Karvinen]

Running software updates on Dapper 6.06 beta 2, debconf asks user to "select the desired default display manager". There is only one option, gdm.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

i just updated to todays gdm 2.14.4-0ubuntu2 using the update-manager, and did not see this.

what did you use to do the upgrade?
do you have any other *dm package? kdm or xdm

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

after installing xdm, and running
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm
i was asked to choose between gdm and xdm

[Gary Coady (garycoady)]

Do you use the GNOME frontend to debconf?

[Gary Coady (garycoady)]

The GNOME frontend shows questions even when there's only one, because Debconf::Element::Gnome::Select inherits first from Debconf::Element::Gnome, and then from Debconf::Element::Select - the second one has the correct definition of visible().

However, Debconf::Element::Gnome inherits from Debconf::Element, which has a basic 'show everything' definition of visible(), so this is used instead.

[Gary Coady (garycoady)]

Reassigning to the debconf package...

[Gary Coady (garycoady)]

This takes the implementation of Debconf::Element::Select->visible and copies it into Debconf::Element::Gnome::Select->visible, because the wrong function was being selected due to multiple inheritance.

If there's another way to do this without duplicating code, that would be better though.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Gary, you rock if I didn't say it already ;)

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Thanks; I've committed a slightly different patch upstream that does '*visible = \&Debconf::Element::Select::visible;' to avoid the code duplication; it also corrects the Gnome multiselect element and the Kde select and multiselect elements, which had similar problems.

I've also backported this change to Dapper:

debconf (1.4.72ubuntu8) dapper; urgency=low

  * Backport from trunk (closes: Malone #42187):
    - Stop the Gnome and Kde frontends from displaying select questions with
      zero or one choices, or multiselect questions with zero choices; this
      was broken due to an error in multiple inheritance (thanks, Gary
      Coady; closes: https://launchpad.net/bugs/42187).

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Mon, 15 May 2006 10:28:53 +0100

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Make that:

debconf (1.4.72ubuntu9) dapper; urgency=low

  * Backport from trunk (closes: Malone #42187):
    - Stop the Gnome and Kde frontends from displaying select questions with
      zero or one choices, or multiselect questions with zero choices; this
      was broken due to an error in multiple inheritance (thanks, Gary
      Coady; closes: https://launchpad.net/bugs/42187).

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Mon, 15 May 2006 11:03:13 +0100