Re: awk: essential virtual package?
>>"Santiago" == Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es> writes:
Santiago> The base-files maintainer asked Christian about the issue,
Santiago> who then asked in debian-policy, and NOBODY answered saying
Santiago> "yes, this is the right thing to do", so he then removed the
Santiago> depends line because it had not been discussed.
I stand corrected. While I do try to follow policy, and would
have responded, I seem to have missed the whole issue altogether. I
think the predepends was put in place a while ago after we discovered
that though everyone agreed that sed, grep, tar, awk, cp, mv, etc
should really be considered essential, no one could decide on the
package which would provide awk (gawk and the then new mawk were
strong contenders).
It was then decided to create the virtual package awk,
provided by both contenders. Since one can't flag a virtual package
as essential, it was decided to have an essential package pre-depend
on awk would have the effect of an essential virtual package, and
never would we have a machine without awk.
I would suggest that people responsible for essential packages
be very careful about taking any action when they are not sure of the
consequences? And to maybe ask some of the more experienced members
of the group when a response on a mialing list is not forthcoming?
And maybe not assume that the previous maintainer was not a total
idiot?
manoj
--
My aura can beat up your aura.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
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