Re: Switching /bin/sh to dash (part two)
On Fri, Jul 24 2009, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 08:20:05PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> > But well, one of the ideas is to avoid having such extra stuff deeply
>> > tied to the core system, i.e. essential.
>
>> That's it? The time to try to reduce the set of Essential
>> packages is to deny entry to new items (like dash), since once the
>> package is essential, people (and not just package maintainers) come to
>> rely on it. Our user base, in particular, has had 15+ years to rely on
>> bash -- and there are loads of user scripts, support systems, cron
>> jobs, third part packages -- that need bash.
>
> I think this is addressable by clearly documenting in Policy (where the
> handling of Essential packages is defined) that packages which invoke
> /bin/dash are required to depend on dash instead of relying on Essential.
Then why make dash Essential, if using dash in packages will
automatically pull it in? At that point, there seems to be no technical
reason for essentialness; is there?
manoj
--
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse. Thomas Szasz
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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