Bug#787009: please add lintian warnings to prepare removing bash as an essential package

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

Control: tags -1 moreinfo

On 2015-05-27 19:56, Matthias Klose wrote:
> Package: lintian
> 
> Bash is still marked as essential while not providing the system shell anymore.
>  Before removing this attribute (probably not for the stretch release),
> additional build dependencies and dependencies on bash need to be introduced.
> 
>  - bash needed for a binary package. that usually means that
>    /bin/bash is used as a shebang, or bash is used to start
>    shell scripts.
> 
>  - bash needed for the source build. Means, that SHELL is set
>    in the rules file to /bin/bash, bash is used in any packaging
>    scripts, or bash is required in the upstream build system.
>    The former too could be checked by lintian, the latter one
>    maybe could be checked by the build log checker.
> 
>  - adjust the lintian warning, that bash is allowed as a build
>    dependency and a dependency, while still being essential.
> 
> Reading policy 3.8, I don't see anything which would be needed as a policy change.
> 
> Matthias
> 
> 

I mentioned this to Matthias on IRC - just copying here to everyone is
aware of it.

  I would strongly prefer if this was brought up on debian-devel before
  we implement this change.

I think this change is too important for lintian to be the primary
messenger.  Matthias agreed on IRC to bring up on d-d first and I have
accordingly tagged this bug moreinfo until that happens.

Thanks,
~Niels