Russ Allbery wrote:
"Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate@debian.org> writes:Why? "Always installed" is different to "essential", see e.g. libc.libc is essential from a Policy perspective. It's just not marked that way in the packaging system in case the SONAME changes, but it's essential in the same way that awk is. Note that dependencies on awk are not required (and indeed are a Lintian warning).
No! ;-) Unfortunately "essential" has two meanings:
- packages which are always required on every Debian system.
- note: there is also the priority "Required"
- note: mawk has priority required, it is not essential,
but an essential package (base-files) predepends on it.
- package who should not be written in the dependency list (but
on versioned dependencies).
I want to solve this question:
"What packages really depends on bash?"
Note: nine packages depends on mawk, so if we replace mawk with gawk
(a trully virtual example) we know where to test the changes (because
it not essential by the second rule). With bash we don't have such info.
I accept that bash is required on every Debian system, but I would
like to have explicit dependencies on bash.
So for my point of view [weight on second interpretation], mawk, glibc are
not really "essential" package.
But I see your confusion, so I propose a change in policy:
- essential will have only the first meaning
- policy must explicitly enumerate the packages which don't require
explicit dependencies.
[for obvious reason these deb should be in the subset of essential or
essential-like packages]
ciao
cate