<heading>Controlling terminal for maintainer scripts</heading>
<p>
- The maintainer scripts are guaranteed to run with a
- controlling terminal and can interact with the user.
- Because these scripts may be executed with standard output
- redirected into a pipe for logging purposes, Perl scripts
- should set unbuffered output by setting <tt>$|=1</tt> so
- that the output is printed immediately rather than being
- buffered.
+ Maintainer scripts are not guaranteed to run with a controlling
+ terminal and may not be able to interact with the user. They
+ must be able to fall back to noninteractive behavior if no
+ controlling terminal is available. Maintainer scripts that
+ prompt via a program conforming to the Debian Configuration
+ Management Specification (see <ref id="maintscriptprompt">) may
+ assume that program will handle falling back to noninteractive
+ behavior.
</p>
</sect>
+
<sect id="exitstatus">
<heading>Exit status</heading>
</p>
<p>
- The maintainer scripts are guaranteed to run with a
- controlling terminal and can interact with the user.
- See <ref id="controllingterminal">.
+ The maintainer scripts are not guaranteed to run with a
+ controlling terminal and may not be able to interact with
+ the user. See <ref id="controllingterminal">.
</p>
</item>