Re: RFC: No new Essential packages?

[Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org>]

Josh Triplett writes:
> Leaving aside the *existing* Essential packages, or any packages they
> might transition into, is there a good rationale to allow *new*
> Essential packages? Would it be reasonable for Policy to have guidance
> suggesting that we should not introduce new Essential packages, and that
> packages should use Depends or Pre-Depends as appropriate instead?

I think there is a consensus that introducing new essential packages
should be avoided.

Is the current wording in Policy not sufficient?  In 3.8 Essential
packages it states "this flag must not be used unless absolutely
necessary" and later "You must not tag any packages essential before
this has been discussed on the debian-devel mailing list and a consensus
about doing that has been reached".

Ansgar