Bug#442070: Policy inconsistent with reality: base subsection no longer used
On Tue, Jan 01, 2008 at 11:49:02AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> writes:
> > 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.
>
> Okay, that implies to me that we've dropped the whole concept of a
> separate base section in favor of just using priorities.
Right.
> > 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.
>
> I'll queue that up for when the lintian Subversion repository comes back.
> (We really need to move to something distributed for lintian at some
> point.)
>
> Okay, I think this patch addresses the issues raised in this thread.
> Comments? Seconds?
>
> --- orig/policy.sgml
> +++ mod/policy.sgml
> @@ -640,14 +640,14 @@
> <p>
> The Debian archive maintainers provide the authoritative
> list of sections. At present, they are:
> - <em>admin</em>, <em>base</em>, <em>comm</em>,
> - <em>contrib</em>, <em>devel</em>, <em>doc</em>,
> + <em>admin</em>, <em>comm</em>,
> + <em>devel</em>, <em>doc</em>,
> <em>editors</em>, <em>electronics</em>, <em>embedded</em>,
> <em>games</em>, <em>gnome</em>, <em>graphics</em>,
> <em>hamradio</em>, <em>interpreters</em>, <em>kde</em>,
> <em>libs</em>, <em>libdevel</em>, <em>mail</em>,
> <em>math</em>, <em>misc</em>, <em>net</em>, <em>news</em>,
> - <em>non-free</em>, <em>oldlibs</em>,
> + <em>oldlibs</em>,
> <em>otherosfs</em>, <em>perl</em>, <em>python</em>,
> <em>science</em>, <em>shells</em>,
> <em>sound</em>, <em>tex</em>, <em>text</em>,
I second this part.
> @@ -1073,24 +1073,6 @@
> </sect>
>
> <sect>
> - <heading>Base system</heading>
> -
> - <p>
> - The <tt>base system</tt> is a minimum subset of the Debian
> - GNU/Linux system that is installed before everything else
> - on a new system. Thus, only very few packages are allowed
> - to go into the <tt>base</tt> section to keep the required
> - disk usage very small.
> - </p>
> -
> - <p>
> - Most of these packages will have the priority value
> - <tt>required</tt> or at least <tt>important</tt>, and many
> - of them will be tagged <tt>essential</tt> (see below).
> - </p>
> - </sect>
> -
> - <sect>
> <heading>Essential packages</heading>
>
> <p>
Hmm. If this section is removed, then the definition of priorities
should indicate that priorities required plus important make up what's
installed as a base Debian system. I think this would be a bit unclear,
though (you have to know the definition in order to work out where to
find it), and so I think it would be better to keep this section but
update its text. How about this?
<heading>Base system</heading>
<p>
The <tt>base system</tt> is a minimum subset of the Debian
GNU/Linux system that is installed before everything else
- on a new system. Thus, only very few packages are allowed
- to go into the <tt>base</tt> section to keep the required
- disk usage very small.
+ on a new system. Only very few packages are allowed to form
+ part of the base system, in order to keep the required disk
+ usage very small.
</p>
<p>
- Most of these packages will have the priority value
- <tt>required</tt> or at least <tt>important</tt>, and many
- of them will be tagged <tt>essential</tt> (see below).
+ The base system consists of all those packages with priority
+ <tt>required</tt> or <tt>important</tt>. Many of them will
+ be tagged <tt>essential</tt> (see below).
</p>
</sect>
<sect>
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@debian.org]
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