essential vs. required vs. base
Packages marked "Essential: yes" have to be operational before they
are configured, and packages need not (and should not) depend on them,
in the same was as they needn't and shouldn't to build-depend on
build-essential packages such as gcc and make. Essential packages are
also the only ones which can be relied on to be working in
postrm:purge.
The priority system exists to help define dependencies .. packages
cannot depend on other packages with a lower priority. Policy
indicates that "Priority: required" packages are thus marked because
they are (mostly) needed by dpkg, which seems like a fine criteria.
I'm including the context diff between essential packages and required
ones. Since essential implies required, why isn't there simply
another priority class, instead of a separate "Essential" field??
There is also the independent concept of "base system", and I don't
understand how that fits in with either of the above.
--
Clear skies,
Justin
--- pkgs-essential 2005-11-07 15:32:12.000000000 -0500
+++ pkgs-required 2005-11-07 15:31:52.000000000 -0500
@@ -3,20 +3,58 @@
bash
bsdutils
coreutils
+debconf
+debconf-i18n
debianutils
diff
dpkg
+dselect
+e2fslibs
e2fsprogs
findutils
+gcc-4.0-base
grep
gzip
hostname
+initscripts
+libacl1
+libattr1
+libblkid1
+libc6
+libcap1
+libcomerr2
+libdb3
+libdb4.3
+libgcc1
+liblocale-gettext-perl
+libncurses5
+libnewt0.51
+libpam-modules
+libpam-runtime
+libpam0g
+libselinux1
+libsepol1
+libslang2
+libss2
+libstdc++6
+libtext-charwidth-perl
+libtext-iconv-perl
+libtext-wrapi18n-perl
+libuuid1
login
+lsb-base
+makedev
+mawk
mount
ncurses-base
ncurses-bin
+passwd
perl-base
+procps
sed
+slang1a-utf8
+sysv-rc
sysvinit
tar
util-linux
+zlib1g
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