Bug#776557: debian-policy: Please clarify 2.5 'unix heritage >= important'
Le Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 09:06:15AM +0000, Martin Zobel-Helas a écrit :
>
> the following sentence in 2.5 leave much room for maneuver, therefor i
> would like to see a clarification how it should be interpreted:
>
> | Important programs, including those which one would expect to find on
> | any Unix-like system. If the expectation is that an experienced Unix
> | person who found it missing would say "What on earth is going on, where
> | is foo?", it must be an important package.
>
> Background here is, that i moved the package "ed" to optional years ago,
> and now have bug #776413 open, which disagrees on that move. I would
> like to keep "ed" in optional, but also see the arguments the submitter
> gave here.
Hi Martin,
I fully agree.
Given that Debian is 20 years old, we can not expect people to have the same
opinion on "What on earth is going on, where is foo?" means. On my side, I
thought that "killall" or "less" would be "what-on-earth" programs, but this is
not the case. My first reaction was to argue they should be present by default
on minimal systems, but my current opinion would be to rather keep minimal
systems as lean as possible and rely on tasks for adding groups of packages.
Regarding the Policy, we need to either find a different principle for defining
the "Important" priority, or transfer the responsibility for choices to a
"do-o-cratic" group of persons, like people making minimal images, maintaining
debootstrap, etc. (and by default, the package maintainer of course)
Have a nice day,
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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