On Sun, Apr 30, 2006 at 02:08:25PM -0700, Tyler MacDonald wrote: > Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote: > > No, that's not what I said. The python-minimal package is designed to be > > used *as* an Essential package, not *by* Essential packages. Nothing, > > essential or not, should depend on it in Debian, whether or not > > python-minimal itself gets marked as Essential: yes. (As long as > > python-minimal is not essential, you don't depend on it because it shouldn't > > be installed without python; if python-minimal *is* essential, you don't > > depend on it because you don't declare dependencies on essential packages.) > I'm playing paranoid here, but why don't you want to declare > dependencies on essential packages? If the package ceases to be Essential at > some point in the future, some non-essential packages may still need it's > functionality, but without this relationship being tracked, the package > could easily disappear. Wouldn't it be better for the package database to > have as much information as possible on what uses what, essential or not? Essential is defined as the minimal set of functionality that must be available and usable on the system even when packages are in an unconfigured (but unpacked) state. This is nedeed to avoid unresolvable dependency loops on upgrade. If you add unnecessary dependencies on packages in this set, you increase the chances that there *will* be an unresolvable dependency loop caused by forcing these Essential packages to be configured first before they need to be. It also increases the chances that frontends will be unable to *calculate* an upgrade path, even if one exists. Also, it's pretty unlikely that we'll ever remove functionality from Essential (which is one of many reasons why we should be cautious about adding to it), but we *have* removed particular packages from Essential in the past when the functionality has moved to a different package. So depending on these packages "just in case" they stop being essential does way more harm than good. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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