Bug#452393: [PROPOSAL] clarify overstep between "required" and "important" priorities

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Robert,

In 2007, Robert Millan wrote:

> In the definition of priorities, "required" and "important" seem to collide
> with each other.  In particular, the part of "required" that reads:
>
>   "Packages which are necessary for the proper functioning of the system"
>
> with the part of "important" that reads:
>
>   "Other packages without which the system will not run well"
>
> Not being a native English speaker, I'm not completely sure if a system can
> "function properly" and at the same time "not run well", but nevertheless
> the barrier seems so thin that I don't think it's reasonable that we require
> that the maintainers sort it out.

I agree --- it's hazy.

In practice, my impression is that "required" usually just means
pseudo-essential (that is, essential packages and their transitive
dependencies).  Is that impression correct?  Would it be worth
documenting?

A part of me wants to suggest getting rid of the "required" priority
altogether and letting tools that currently use it (like debootstrap)
instead use the Essential flag and the package index to compute the
pseudo-essential set.

  Downside: losing the ritual of explicitly acknowledging that a
  package has gained or lost pseudo-essential status.

  Upsides: removing some redundancy in the state of the archive,
  avoiding some ambiguity and confusion, and avoiding some make-work.

  For example, the xz-utils package in wheezy is currently not
  pseudo-essential but I haven't bothered to lower its priority yet.

What do you think?  Have I described the current state correctly?

Thanks,
Jonathan