Re: NOTICE for all package maintainers with faulty post-install scripts

[Andrew Schulman <schulman dot andrew at epamail dot epa dot gov>]

> Thanks to Jon Turney's recent patch we've discovered that many
> post-install packages were previously failing silently. 

Failing silently... so what is the preferred protocol in case a
post-install script fails?  Emit a message to stderr, which will be caught
and shown to the user?

If a post-install script fails in an ignorable way, then does this mean
it's not acceptable to allow the script to exit with a non-zero status?
That is, we have to either exit 0, or else exit non-zero and emit a useful
message?

If a post-install script succeeds (and exits with status 0) but still emits
text to stderr or even stdout, will that text also be caught and shown to
the user?

Do the answers to all of the above also apply to preremove scripts?

Sorry if some of this has already been discussed.  I haven't followed all
of the discussion of this new feature.

Thanks,
Andrew.