Re: packages being essential but having stuff in /usr/?!

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Christoph Anton Mitterer]
> Now coreutils is marked as essential, right?!
> This means per policy section 3.8
> (http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#s3.8):
> "Essential is defined as the minimal set of functionality that must be
> available and usable on the system at all times"
>
> As far as I understand,.. it's fully ok, to have /usr on a separate
> (i.e. non-root-) filesystem. 
>
> That however would mean, that even outsite initramfs images (which are
> probably a special case and do not count) many of corutils' binaries are
> not _always_ available.

I believe this is a misunderstanding.  The quoted section do not mean
that all files in a essential package need to be on the root
partition, but that the package should always be installed.

This is the first time I hear someone read the policy section the way
you do it, and I believe it is not representative for the intention
behind that part of the policy.

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen