Bug#843117: lintian does not warn on Essential dependencies

["Adam D. Barratt" <adam@adam-barratt.org.uk>]

Control: tags -1 + moreinfo

On 2016-11-04 0:17, Nicolas Braud-Santoni wrote:
> According to the Debian Policy, packages should not declare 
> dependencies
> on packages tagged Essential:
>
>   
> https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#s-dependencies
>
> However, I noticed that lintian does not warn if, for instance,
> one declares a dependency upon dash.

lintian *does* warn about dependencies on Essential:yes packages, as can 
be seen from 
https://lintian.debian.org/tags/depends-on-essential-package-without-using-version.html

Checking 
https://anonscm.debian.org/git/lintian/lintian.git/tree/data/fields/essential 
also shows that the list of packages checked for includes dash.

Is the package that you believe is being incorrectly flagged available 
somewhere for testing?

Regards,

Adam