Re: Priorities

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, martin f krafft wrote:

> Can you please shine some light on section 2.2 of the Policy?
> I understand required and important, but the phrasing of optional and
> extra are a little cumbersome. I think my packages may not all have
> the right priorities and before I go and fix them, I need to
> understand...
>
> Aren't almost all addon packages (= those that I am packaging, nothing
> important) optional?

Yes, "optional" should be the usual priority for most packages.

> When is a package priority extra?

It's not completely clear from the definition, but at least you must
use "extra" if your package conflicts with any other package of
optional or higher priority.

[ The optional priority is for someone who wants to install "everything"
  even if the user does not even know what the packages are for.
  Policy dictates that there should not be conflicts among packages
  having optional or higher priorities. ]

The "specialized requirements" in the definition of "extra" often
means "you need special hardware". The problem with this is that
something that was specialised several years ago might not be so
specialised nowadays. For example, I don't understand why cdrecord is
still "extra" these days...