Re: Bug #32888: The old `base' package.

[Julian Gilbey <J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk>]

> It is not a critical bug that removing an essential package makes the
> system to be messed up. It is expected behaviour. Could somebody explain
> to me why do we consider this to be a bug at all?. When you remove any
> package which is called "obsolete" by dselect, the user loses its
> functionality. Is the "obsolete" word the problem? If so then this bug
> should probably be reassigned to dpkg as wishlist so that it uses
> some different word.

My understanding was that the "base" package has now been obsoleted by
other packages which provide the same functionality.  Therefore the
base package should be removable.  The fact that it is obsolete and
replaced means that it should be removable, even though it was
"essential" in the past.  But it doesn't clear its filelist, even
though the files are now provided by other packages, or something like
that, so removing the base package deletes all of these essential
files.  Bad news and very serious.

   Julian

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  Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
             Debian GNU/Linux Developer.  jdg@debian.org
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