Russ Allbery wrote:
"Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate@debian.org> writes:Russ Allbery wrote: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"Which is not the same thing.- note: mawk has priority required, it is not essential, but an essential package (base-files) predepends on it.awk is essential. Specific awk implementations are not, but the interface is essential. This is something that we've discussed many times over the years and I'm absolutely certain that statement is correct.
awk is a virtual package, so it could not be essential. Virtual packages have not package flags. mawk is alway installed (required and a dependency of an essential package). mawk provides awk, but mawk is not essential.
- package who should not be written in the dependency list (but on versioned dependencies).awk should not be written into the dependency list, because it is essential.
not with the "essential flag"
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).Not if you need to check all the packages that depend on awk.
hmm. Your sentence is not so good ;-) Do you mean "depend implicitly"?
I think the best way to resolve the confusion is for you to bring your internal interpretation of essential in line with the definition the rest of the project uses. :)
Maybe. But now you enlarged the interpretation of 3.8 with indirect essential packages ;-) "awk" has no explicit "Essential" flag! ciao cate