Subject: Bug#3770: dodgy `\n' in perl postinst

From: Richard Kettlewell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 96 23:22:14 +0100 (BST)

Package: perl
Version: 5.002-10

    richard@sfere:binary$ really dpkg -i devel/perl-
    perl-5.002-10.deb       perl-suid-5.002-10.deb  perl-tk-b11.02-0.deb
    richard@sfere:binary$ really dpkg -i devel/perl-5.002-10.deb devel/perl-suid-5.002-10.deb 
    (Reading database ... 18380 files and directories currently installed.)
    Preparing to replace perl (using devel/perl-5.002-10.deb) ...
    Unpacking replacement perl ...
    Selecting previously deselected package perl-suid.
    Unpacking perl-suid (from devel/perl-suid-5.002-10.deb) ...
    Setting up perl ...
    Creating Perl header files.  This may take a while...
 +->\nIf possible, you should use Socket and/or some of the other modules.
 |  h2ph has always been somewhat broken.
 |
Here.

In addition the admonition to use Socket.pm and its friends instead of
the h2ph output is, while worthy, true, etc, not appropriate material
for a postinst to output; from the Guidelines:

       If a package has a vitally important piece of information to
    pass to the user (such as "don't run me as I am, you must edit the
    following configuration files first or you risk your system
    emitting badly-formatted messages"), it should display this in the
    `postinst' script and prompt the user to hit Return to acknowledge
    the message.  Copyright messages do not count as vitally important
    (they belong in `/usr/doc/copyright'; neither do instructions on
    how to use a program (these should be in on line documentation,
    where all the users can see them).

-- 
Richard Kettlewell   [email-masked]   [email-masked]
                             http://www.elmail.co.uk/staff/richard/