Re: Packages to install be default for Stretch

[Ansgar Burchardt <ansgar@debian.org>]

On 05/06/2015 11:34 AM, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> On Tue May 05, 2015 at 20:45:09 +0200, Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
>>  * Packages currently at "important":
>>     - cron:
>>       Not needed in chroot/container environments.
>>       -> demote to "standard"
> 
> RC.
> 
> | important
> | Important programs, including those which one would expect to find on
> | any Unix-like system. If the expectation is that an experienced Unix
> | person who found it missing would say "What on earth is going on, where
> | is foo?", it must be an important package.[6] Other packages without
> | which the system will not run well or be usable must also have priority
> | important. This does not include Emacs, the X Window System, TeX or any
> | other large applications. The important packages are just a bare minimum
> | of commonly-expected and necessary tools.
> 
> cron is part of POSIX.

The problem here is what the expectations of an experienced UNIX person
are... I hopefully count as having some experience, but I don't expect
cron to be available everywhere (unlike say awk); I would still expect
it to be part of a "reasonably small but not too limited character-mode
system" (that is "standard" priority).

Note that I believe this has changed over time: with the advent of VMs
and containers the expectations what a system should minimally provide
have become smaller.

I'll not comment on where I see emacs and vim ;)

> http://www.unix.com/apropos-man/posix/1/cron/

Note that this also includes the following requirement:

| If standard output and standard error are not redirected by commands |
executed from the crontab entry, any generated output or errors shall |
be mailed, via an implementation-defined method, to the user.

That requires something to deliver mail. However I really don't think we
want a MTA to be at "important" priority.

> So either we fix the policy or cron needs to stay in 'important'.

"at", "m4", "mailx", ... are also not at "important", though required by
POSIX.

But as admitted earlier, I am not totally sure about "cron". Maybe we
should keep it at "important" at least for stretch and revisit it in the
buster cycle; not sure yet.

Ansgar