Re: Bug#758234: it's actively harmful
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 07:30:57PM +0100, Matthias Urlichs wrote:
> That's obvious. What is not so obvious, to me, is why we would still
> want the current policy in the first place, given that everything(?)
> is resolved via dependencies these days.
Maybe because current policy allows one to take the following set of packages:
+ Packages of required priority.
* Packages of important or higher priority.
* Packages of standard or higher priority.
and all those sets are self-consistent (i.e. they don't have
dependencies outside the set).
I think this is a useful and nice property, but I don't know how many
people rely on it.
> The only practical effect of these priorities I can recognize is that
> apt* refuses to remove Essential packages without asking a question
> which reminds me what the Shift key is for.¹²
Minor clarification: Essential is a flag, not a priority.
Essential packages are almost always required, but they may also be
extra if they Conflicts/Replaces an already existing essential package,
as an alternate implementation for the same functionality (not that there
are a lot of packages like that, but they are not excluded by policy).
In either case, it is the essential flag, not the required priority,
what makes apt-get to ask you enter the phrase "yes, i agree this is
very bad".
Thanks.
Reply to: