awk: essential virtual package?

[Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>]

Santiago (base-files maintainer) pointed out that the current base-files
package depends on the virtual package `awk' which makes awk `implicitely'
essential.

(With that it is guaranteed, that _some_ awk version is always installed,
either gawk or mawk or both.) 

This brings up the following questions:

 1. Should `awk' be an `essential' package (i.e., is it important enough
so that other packages don't have to depend on it)? 

 2. Is there a better solution to tag virtual packages `essential'?

If this solution turns out to be good, then it should probably be
documented in the policy manual, and the base-files package should contain
a note about the `Depends: awk' somewhere in a README.Debian file.



Thanks,

Chris

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