Bug#758234: debian-policy: allow packages to depend on packages of lower priority
Gerrit Pape <pape@dbnbgs.smarden.org> writes:
> On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 09:03:14AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> Gerrit Pape <pape@dbnbgs.smarden.org> writes:
>>> Hi, in my opinion this paragraph in policy is just fine
>> I really don't agree. Policy currently implies that the maintainers of
>> packages control their priority settings in the archive. This is simply
>> not true, and has not been true for as long as I've been involved in
>> Debian.
> Hi, AIUI this is not the topic this bug is about. The subject says
> "allow packages to depend on packages of lower priority" and the body
> suggest to remove the paragraph from policy.
> I hereby object to this change.
Hi Gerrit,
Thanks for the additional information. I think I now understand more
about your objection now.
As I understand it, your primary concern is around the decision-making
process for handling changes to priority (particularly increasing
priority). That, in turn, I assume is driven by concerns about the size
and packages included in a default Debian installation and a minimal
Debian installation.
What happened here is that this got entangled with many other problems
with the way that priorities are discussed in Policy at the moment, and
which really need to be fixed. Those are, briefly:
1. The distinction between optional and extra is confusing and of dubious
utility. The only concrete guidance here is that, for any pair of
conflicting packages, at most one may be priority optional or higher.
This in turn was due to a previous project goal that all optional and
higher packages can be co-installed, a requirement that many of us
think is largely uninteresting given the current size of the Debian
archive at this point.
2. Policy provides no useful information about how priorities are managed,
and implies that the priority value in debian/control is canonical.
(It at least gives no hint that priority information is stored in any
other location.) This has very little contact with the actual workflow
of priority settings inside Debian, and Policy should not be confusing
here.
So, here's what I would propose.
First, I agree with your direction on eliminating extra and allowing
Priority: optional packages to conflict with each other. I think the
overhead of managing this distinction is more trouble than it's worth, and
the original goals largely no longer apply.
Second, I think we should document the actual way that priorities are
changed in Debian Policy somewhere, and say explicitly that ftp-master is
canoncial for priorities, not the package maintainers.
Third, to address your concern about the process, what about consensus
review on debian-devel for any change in priority to required or
important (that is not a downgrade from required to important)? Consensus
review isn't the best process, since sometimes it can be hard to determine
when it's concluded, but it seems to work reasonably well for Pre-Depends,
and I think it would at least address the awareness question. ftp-master
as the holders of the overrides would then rely on the debian-devel
consensus as input to their decision on whether to approve the override
change.
Does that sound like a workable way forward?
Cc to ftp-master for them to review this proposal as well.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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