Question regarding RPM packaging of interactive software.

[Haïkel Guémar]

Le 08/01/2011 17:31, susmit shannigrahi a écrit :
> 
> For subsequent installations (if tried), it simply overwrites the
> database. In this process, it asks the user whether to overwrite the
> DB or not. 

This is plain stupid to overwrite the database by default, this MUST be
fixed by upstream before inclusion. If that's all the user interaction
required, no need to search further.
Since RPM has no interactive user input support, the only way would be
scripting it using automation tools like expect or pexpect (if you're a
pythonista) but handling interactive user input is quite buggy (how do
you handle translated strings ?, what happens if upstream modifies its
user interface ? etc ...)

> My initial thought was to backup the database somewhere and
> continue.

Not acceptable from an user POV.

best regards,
H.