Re: Policy wrt Important (was Re: dc and bc in Important?)

[James Troup <J.J.Troup@comp.brad.ac.uk>]

John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:

> By the current definition of Important:
>  * Sendmail should be there instead of smail since people expect
>    sendmail

People expect a mailer.  Debian's default mailer is exim^H^H^H^Hsmail;
that's a deliberate decision to override the commonly expected tool,
in favour of something which Debian considers better. (AIUI)

>  * dpkg-dev should not be there since no experienced user of another
>    Unix would expect it
>  * lilo should not be there because lilo is not part of UNIX

Did you actually read the definition of important in Policy or just
the part I included in my response?  Here's the rest of it :-

``Other packages without which the system will not run well or be
useable should also be here. This does not include Emacs or X11 or TeX
or any other large applications. The important packages are just a
bare minimum of commonly-expected and necessary tools.''

Now correct me if I'm wrong (I don't own an i386, and don't boot the
ones I use) but lilo or some other booter seems pretty Important to
me.

>  * gcc should be in Important because everybody expects a C compiler
>  * libc5-dev should be there because everybody expects working
>    header files
>  * make should be there, I expect a working make in any Unix

"bare minimum" doesn't extend to a compilation environment.

>  * lpr should be there, it is standard with just about any Unix

or to printing, IMO.

>  * netbase and netstd should both be there, they are standard
>    on Unix

That's much more valid, perhaps they should be important, I don't
know.

>  * csh/tcsh should be there (again, standard on various Unices)

the "bare minimum" is provided by sh.  Adding csh/tcsh would be
overkill, IMO.

> Basically, it seems that this policy doesn't quite apply correctly.

I totally agree with what Galen said: the policy is a guide not
something to be applied to the letter, and IMO a good one and on the
whole most maintainers have got it right.  If you don't think so bring
it up with the individual packages.

-- 
James


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