Re: essential packages and Pre-Depends

[Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@datasync.com>]

Hi,
>>"john" == john  <john@dhh.gt.org> writes:

john> I just looked at ed and found to my surprise that it is neither
john> essential nor required.  I would think that it ed would be
john> common enough in scripts of all sorts to at least qualify as
john> required.  

	Have you researched this? do any scripts actually use ed? I
 have looked, and this is what I have: ed's maintainers scripts, and
 an email address that starts with ed. Of course, this is not
 exhaustive, but this is a very comlpete hamm installation, and should
 definitely be representative.

	I think people don't really use ed any more that much (and
 since Perl and awk and sed are already essential, I do not see a
 pressing need to change the status quo.

	manoj

__> perl -we 'while (<>){ /\bed\b/og && do {print "$ARGV:$_";}}' \
             /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.prerm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ed.prerm:           install-info --quiet --remove /usr/info/ed.info.gz
__> perl -we 'while (<>){ /\bed\b/og && do {print "$ARGV:$_";}}' \
             /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.preinst
__> perl -we 'while (<>){ /\bed\b/og && do {print "$ARGV:$_";}}' \
             /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/a2gs.postinst:# "a2gs/debian/postinst" by Kenneth MacDonald <K.MacDonald@ed.ac.uk>
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ed.postinst:                     --quiet /usr/info/ed.info.gz
__> perl -we 'while (<>){ /\bed\b/og && do {print "$ARGV:$_";}}' \
             /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.postrm
__>

-- 
 In his book, Mr. DePree tells the story of how designer George Nelson
 urged that the company also take on Charles Eames in the late 1940s.
 Max's father, DePree, co-founder of the company with Herman Miller in
 1923, asked Mr. Nelson if he really wanted to share the limited
 opportunities of a then-small company with another designer.
 "George's response was something like this: 'Charles Eames is an
 unusual talent.  He is very different from me.  The company needs us
 both.  I want very much to have Charles Eames share in whatever
 potential there is.'" Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller
 Inc., "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall
 Street Journal, May 3, 1988
Manoj Srivastava  <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
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