Including license agreement in .deb file

Question

How can i include a license agreement interaction in a .deb file? The question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/668838/linux-support-for-click-thru-licenses only asks if its possible, but not how. Also, I'm not sure if http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1884753/license-info-of-a-deb-package is actually something one could use...

I know it's possible to include the text as part of the package description, but I'd much rather have it similar to a Windows MSI installer.

Note that I don't want to have the license pop up the first time the application runs.

I'm using dpkg-deb to generate the .deb file on Ubuntu 8.10.

Answer 1

Put the question in the preinst script for your package, and if they answer incorrectly (or don't answer), exit the script with an error code and the package won't be installed.

The typical way to ask the user questions during package installation is with debconf. There are alternatives to debconf, including just using the bash read builtin. Debconf just makes it easy for you. There's a tutorial at http://www.fifi.org/doc/debconf-doc/tutorial.html