bsdutils claims to provide kill, which is wrong (was Re: Bug#64460: whois package shouldn't be Priority: important, rather optional)
Package: bsdutils
Version: 2.10f-5
Severity: normal
It is very hard to hunt down a lot of this information. For example, the
bsdutils description claims that it provides "kill," but in fact it is
procps that provides "kill." Although bsdutils is "required," it actually
only provides "script," "logger," "renice," and "wall" -- which hardly
seem to be "required." This is at least a doc error, but it seems to me
that bsdutils and bsdmainutils should both be "standard."
It seems strange at best that procps and bsdutils are both "required," but
that procps states that it replaces bsdutils. My guess is that the
maintainer for procps really intended to say that procps replaces older
versions of bsdutils, but that is not how it is in the database.
As the maintainer for cron, which I concur should be "important," you
probably have a better idea than I do why it depends upon bsdutils. If
you are looking for kill, it is in procps. Other than bsdmainutils,
nothing "required" or "important" except cron seems to need bsdutils. If
cron no longer depends upon bsdutils, then I can see no reason why both
bsdutils and bsdmainutils could not both be dropped to "standard."
-- Mike
On 2000-05-22 at 15:19 -0500, Steve Greenland wrote:
> I think there are a lot of things in required not for the user but for
> other packages maintainer scripts. Bsdmainutils is probably in important
> because one (or more) of the utilities it supplies is needed by cron or
> man or something. Yes, bsdmainutils could be split, but it's not really
> worth the effort.
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