Re: IMPORTANT: What can we do about the base package?

[Tony Finch <fanf@lspace.org>]

Brian C. White wrote:
>> The next release will obsolete the base package. Some stuff will go into
>> base-files, some stuff will go into base-passwd, and some stuff will go
>> into no package at all.
>
>I understand that dpkg will remove a package if all of its files are
>provided by other packages.
>
>Will the smaller packages not encompass all of the files in the current
>base package?  If not, could we just create zero length dummy files in
>them that can be removed at in a later release?

The main problem is the device files in /dev. These are created by the
makedev package, but are not in its file list. They _are_ in base's
file list, so removing base is a bad thing to do without a great deal
of care.

Would it be possible to incorporate a really gross hack into makedev
that `manually' removes the base package (so long as base-files and
base-passwd are installed) without dpkg getting involved (i.e. by
removing its files from /var/lib/dpkg/info and editing
/var/lib/dpkg/status)? This idea will probably give Ian a fit...

Tony.