Re: Essential pacakges
On Sat, 7 Mar 1998, Remco Blaakmeer wrote:
> > Now, my understanding is that essential packages, by definition, must
> > be installed for the system to function - This package claims to be
> > essential but removes other essential packages! (thus an essential package
> > does not have to be installed for the system to function)
> >
> > This is going to cause me grief, should this be allowed or is this package
> > in serious viloation of policy?
>
> No. When a package is essential and provides, replaces and conflicts with
> an essential package, this is not a bug. This just means that one
> essential package is meant to replace another (older) essential package
> and provides all the functionality that was in the older package.
In this case one packages is not older, they both exist in hamm. They are
both equally important and I presume that in some instance someone will
want to have the 'cmpr' version of e2fsprogs.
The trouble is that a tool like deity cannot provide automatic
installation of essential packages during a big upgrade because of this
problem!
As I stated in the message, essential packages are packages that must be
in the system in order for it to work, the policy manual says that
explicit dependancies do not need to be declared on essential packages
<etc>. So technically if a new essential package appears it may very will
be than any arbitary package in the distribution requires this to
function and hence it would be safe to install all essential packages...
Jason
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