Bug#488237: lsb-base: useless package dependencies

[Didier Raboud <odyx@debian.org>]

Le lundi, 5 mars 2012 21.39:51, Matt Taggart a écrit :
> Having the explicit dependencies on essential packages was still sort of
> useful to demonstrate what packages provided the LSB components. Also
> without them suppose an unlisted dependency becomes no longer essential
> then that will introduce a bug in the LSB support.
> 
> Long ago there existed a document that mapped the required LSB components
> to the packages that provide them (in some cases multiple implementations).
> I don't know if that still exists somewhere but would be useful to have as
> well.

Hi Matt, 

thanks for your followup on this topic.

I grepped the git repository I set up for maintaining LSB to find those lists
and they were indeed removed in the 3.0-3 upload, when closing bug #321260.
The way it was closed is curious though.

	http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-
maint/lsb.git;a=commit;h=debian/3.0-3

I note though that this documentation refers mostly to LSB 1.0 and hasn't been 
maintained since. I wouldn't oppose shipping it or an updated version of it 
but I don't intend to write or update it myself.

Now about the case for not listing "essential" dependencies, I note that both 
sed and ncurses-bin are real (aka not transitional) "Essential" packages and 
that having them loose that status would cause far bigger problems in Debian 
than LSB support. I weighed Policy compliance above that issue I guess. I'm 
open to discussion though!

Cheers,

OdyX