Abusing FAI: standalone auto-installation

[Marc SCHAEFER]

On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, Niall Young wrote:

> as one of the core methods, feeding it a pre-filled debconf database.

A question on the `pre-filled debconf database'. I had recently a `clash'
(quite friendly) with the `locales' maintainer which was doing:

   - if /etc/locale.gen contains something, replaces the debconf database
     with that.

   - else, set "" in the debconf database.

I objected that I didn't see the use of debconf, and that I would prefer
defaults to be taken from debconf in this case instead of setting to an
empty string. I was replied that debconf is no registry, and that I can't
expect anything when prefilling debconf.

Apparently, the only solution is to implement an artificial debconf
frontend which will use another database and send the pre-stored database
answers when required.

How does this impact FAI ?