Re: non-essential required packages

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Thu, 2 Nov 2000, Anthony Towns wrote:

> Hello world,
> 
> On priorities, amongst other things, policy says:
> 
>      `required'
>           `required' packages are necessary for the proper functioning of
>           the system.  You must not remove these packages or your system
>           may become totally broken and you may not even be able to use
>           `dpkg' to put things back.  Systems with only the `required'
>           packages are probably unusable, but they do have enough
>           functionality to allow the sysadmin to boot and install more
>           software.

For a long time this has not been the case. We can change the definition
of `required' to match reality, instead of downgrading a lot of packages.