Re: Proposed new POSIX sh policy, version two
Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
> Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@cante.net> writes:
>
> To be frank, I don't think you're going to have a lot of luck. Basically,
> you're trying to move bash into the same category as awk, where it's not
> explicitly essential and can be handled by something akin to alternatives,
> but given that this will require modifying all packages that use bash
> explicitly and there's little incentive for maintainers to do this unless
> it's made RC (and I have a hard time imagining that would happen), I don't
> think the transition is likely to happen. It's a lot of work, and the
> amount of gain doesn't seem to warrant it.
I must have explained poorly then.
- There is no need to make *any* changes to packages
- But it would be helpful if patches to make things transparent
were made acceptable.
The problem is that policy gives a leverage to the maintainers to
shrug their shoulders to anything that touches something belonging
Essential: "It's there so I don't care". And when the Policy text
alleviates that "packages provided by Essestial need not be
mentioned", that the final straw.
Now, I'm asking for thinking it another way around:
- It's all good to announce only dpendencies that are not in Essential
- BUT, it should be encouraged to list all dependencies even if
in essential.
This would change the whole mindset and expose package to full set of
dependencies if someone wants to do that. It sould also make it
possible to provide patches to the "Depends:".
... and if someone cares anough, he could even start converting some
bashism to sh-only and send a patch. Encourageable practise again,
if policy were with it.
Jari
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