Bug#442070: Policy inconsistent with reality: base subsection no longer used
On Sun, Dec 30, 2007 at 08:29:27PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Magnus Holmgren <holmgren@lysator.liu.se> writes:
> > AFAIU, the base subsection was obsoleted with Etch (apparently, its
> > removal was discussed already in 1997), and (almost) all packages moved
> > to ordinary subsections, like other packages. However, it is still
> > listed in section 2.4 and referred to in section 3.7.
>
> > I think policy should contain or point to the real definition of the
> > base system.
>
> That would be great. Could you, or someone else, get together with the
> debian-installer folks and whoever else would be an expert in what
> constitutes the base system and propose new wording for Policy?
I don't have time to do the wordsmithing, but I can be your expert
witness. debian-installer (specifically, debootstrap) now simply
installs everything with Priority: required or Priority: important as
the base system, and has done so for some time. See the changelog for
debootstrap 0.3.1.
> Also, do you have a reference for the obsolescence of the base section?
> Even without the real definition of base (which I suspect is actually done
> by priority), if that section isn't used any more, we should remove it.
> (And remove it from lintian, etc.)
I seem to remember that ftpmaster went through a while back and moved
everything from base to other sections. A couple of packages seem to
have sneaked back in, though; on my unstable system, I see lustre-source
with Section: base and zd1211-firmware with Section: non-free/base (!).
Unfortunately the list of sections in dak's configuration file appears
to be global rather than per-suite, so it might require some work to
make base an invalid section from here on without breaking old suites.
Removing it from lintian would be good, though.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@debian.org]
Reply to: