Re: Bug#758234: debian-policy: allow packages to depend on packages of lower priority
Hi Russ,
Your suggestion looks good to me so just in case it's useful:
Seconded.
Can't help but wonder why not just remove the "extra" (and mentioning it
as deprecated in upgrade notes) rather than explicitly documenting it as
deprecated. I guess keeping it around is useful to avoid people
mass-bug-filing RC-bugs for all current extra packages.
I also think a really good upgrade notice for this is needed. Should be
very clearly mentioned people adjusting their packages should not forget
to also file a bug against ftp.debian.org to align the overrides. I
think the suggested new language in the policy itself is clear, but I'm
still sure many people will overlook that the Priority field in the
control file is not the canonical location for the actual priority used
by the debian archive. I think you've done a very good job for upgrade
notes keeping them short and to the point previously so I trust you'll
do an excellent job here as well, but if you want help with suggestions
please mention it and a non-native speaker like myself would make an
attempt.
Regards,
Andreas Henriksson
On Sun, Jun 25, 2017 at 03:54:00PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
[...]
> diff --git a/policy.xml b/policy.xml
> index ace6a3b..be458cd 100644
> --- a/policy.xml
> +++ b/policy.xml
> @@ -837,11 +837,33 @@
> <title>Priorities</title>
>
> <para>
> - Each package should have a <emphasis>priority</emphasis> value,
> - which is included in the package's <emphasis>control
> - record</emphasis> (see <xref linkend="s-f-Priority"/>). This
> - information is used by the Debian package management tools to
> - separate high-priority packages from less-important packages.
> + Each package must have a <emphasis>priority</emphasis> value,
> + which is set in the metadata for the Debian archive and is also
> + included in the package's control files (see <xref
> + linkend="s-f-Priority"/>). This information is used to control
> + which packages are included in standard or minimal Debian
> + installations.
> + </para>
> + <para>
> + Most Debian packages will have a priority of
> + <literal>optional</literal>. Priority levels other than
> + <literal>optional</literal> are only used for packages that should
> + be included by default in a standard installation of Debian.
> + </para>
> + <para>
> + The priority of a package is determined solely by the
> + functionality it provides directly to the user. The priority of a
> + package should not be increased merely because another
> + higher-priority package depends on it; instead, the tools used to
> + construct Debian installations will correctly handle package
> + dependencies. In particular, this means that C-like libraries
> + will almost never have a priority above
> + <literal>optional</literal>, since they do not provide
> + functionality directly to users. However, as an exception, the
> + maintainers of Debian installers may request an increase of the
> + priority of a package to resolve installation issues and ensure
> + that the correct set of packages is included in a standard or
> + minimal install.
> </para>
> <para>
> The following <emphasis>priority levels</emphasis> are recognized
> @@ -896,19 +922,22 @@
> installed by default if the user doesn't select anything
> else. It doesn't include many large applications.
> </para>
> + <para>
> + No two packages that both have a priority of
> + <literal>standard</literal> or higher may conflict with each
> + other.
> + </para>
> </listitem>
> </varlistentry>
> <varlistentry>
> <term><literal>optional</literal></term>
> <listitem>
> <para>
> - (In a sense everything that isn't required is optional, but
> - that's not what is meant here.) This is all the software
> - that you might reasonably want to install if you didn't know
> - what it was and don't have specialized requirements. This
> - is a much larger system and includes the X Window System, a
> - full TeX distribution, and many applications. Note that
> - optional packages should not conflict with each other.
> + This is the default priority for the majority of the
> + archive. Unless a package should be installed by default on
> + standard Debian systems, it should have a priority of
> + <literal>optional</literal>. Packages with a priority of
> + <literal>optional</literal> may conflict with each other.
> </para>
> </listitem>
> </varlistentry>
> @@ -916,22 +945,21 @@
> <term><literal>extra</literal></term>
> <listitem>
> <para>
> - This contains all packages that conflict with others with
> - required, important, standard or optional priorities, or are
> - only likely to be useful if you already know what they are
> - or have specialized requirements (such as packages
> - containing only detached debugging symbols).
> + <emphasis>This priority is deprecated.</emphasis> Use the
> + <literal>optional</literal> priority instead.
> + </para>
> + <para>
> + The <literal>extra</literal> priority was previously used
> + for packages that conflicted with other packages and
> + packages that were only likely to be useful to people with
> + specialized requirements. However, this distinction was
> + somewhat arbitrary, not consistently followed, and not
> + useful enough to warrant the maintenance effort.
> </para>
> </listitem>
> </varlistentry>
> </variablelist>
> - <para>
> - Packages must not depend on packages with lower priority values
> - (excluding build-time dependencies). In order to ensure this, the
> - priorities of one or more packages may need to be adjusted.
> - </para>
> </section>
> -
> </chapter>
>
> <chapter id="ch-binary">
>
> --
> Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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