Re: Bug#452393: [PROPOSAL] clarify overstep between "required" and "important" priorities
Le Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 09:46:10PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder a écrit :
>
> Good catch. That means the wording needs a little more work, to
> explain that only one of 'mawk' and 'gawk' (and one of 'sysv-rc' and
> 'file-rc', etc) has to be of priority required. (*)
>
> Maybe we should define it as a minimal set of packages implementing
> the essential functionality (§3.8) instead of defining it in terms of
> essential packages. Other ideas?
>
> Here's the current patch for reference. It doesn't address the point
> marked above with (*).
>
> [1] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debconf-devel/2012-March/003267.html
>
> diff --git i/policy.sgml w/policy.sgml
> index 52dbb26a..81511730 100644
> --- i/policy.sgml
> +++ w/policy.sgml
> @@ -757,9 +757,8 @@
> <taglist>
> <tag><tt>required</tt></tag>
> <item>
> - Packages which are necessary for the proper
> - functioning of the system (usually, this means that
> - dpkg functionality depends on these packages).
> + Packages tagged <tt>Essential: yes</tt> and their
> + dependencies.
> Removing a <tt>required</tt> package may cause your
> system to become totally broken and you may not even
> be able to use <prgn>dpkg</prgn> to put things back,
Hello everybody,
§3.7 defines the "base system" as required plus important pacakges. With this
patch, we have the nice definition that "required" implements the "essential"
part, and "important" implements the rest of the base. I think that it
explains better the role of these priorities. By the way, in the current
Policy, the specifications of what the base system provides are scattered
across the document. I am tempted to open a bug about reorganising this for
the version 4.0 of the Policy. Do you think it would be a good idea ?
For the case of alternative dependancies, the question is not restricted to the
"required" priority, so I think that the clarification, if needed, would better
be in the last paragraph of §2.5 ("Packages must not depend on packages with
lower priority values").
I second the above patch as it is or with clarifications of "and there
dependencies". (And of course with additional markup such as a link to §3.8).
Have a nice week-end,
--
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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