Re: deselect survey
On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 09:46:52AM -0500, Matt Barry wrote:
> IIRC, dselect is a "required" package; when I try to "apt-get remove
> dselect" (sid), I am warned rather severely about the removal of 75
> packages, including several essential ones:
>
> WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed
> This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
> dpkg dselect (due to dpkg) sysvinit initscripts (due to sysvinit)
> ....
> You are about to do something potentially harmful
> To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!'
>
> I doubt I would still have a working installation if I were bold enough
> to type such an invocation (not that it's presence particularly bothers
> me on anything but embedded systems, but it seems it could be a
> Recommends instead with no ill effects)..
The reason why dpkg Pre-Depends on dselect is that, if it did not,
people upgrading from woody to sarge using dselect could find that
dselect disappears out from under their feet during the upgrade. The
pre-dependency is purely transitional.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@debian.org]
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