Re: non-essential required packages
On Thu, 2 Nov 2000, Steve Greenland wrote:
> I think the difference is that dpkg (and apt?) do special handling
> of the "essential: yes" packages (sort of like pre-depends), but not
> those that are merely required. Or is the special handling only that it
> requires a special effort to remove them?
dpkg doesn't care, except that it requires special effort to remove them.
APT however has the implict restriction that every single package in the
distribution pre-depends on all essential packages. This means you can
freely use the features they provide in all post/pre inst/remove scripts
without having to worry.
APT also installs all available essential packages when you do a
dist-upgrade.
The required priority has no special properties and I think that makes
alot of sense.
Jason
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