Re: [Fwd: Re: Why?]
On Sun, 2006-07-16 at 16:20 -0500, John Hasler wrote:
> Owen Heisler writes:
> > Still, I was thinking more of packages like "login" that could surely be
> > considered "essential" for 99% of Debian systems out there, along with
> > the common frontends to apt for package management, like aptitude and
> > dselect, so other packages can be installed using the preferred program.
>
> Packages that are considered absolutely essential are tagged 'essential'
> and dpkg will refuse to remove them. 'login' is 'essential'.
>
> Packages in section 'base' form the minimum set required to run the package
> management system and install packages. Not all 'base' packages are
> 'essential' or 'required' as packages such as ppp which not all users will
> need are in 'base'.
>
> Priorities are:
>
> required
>
> Packages which are necessary for the proper functioning of the
> system (usually, this means that dpkg functionality depends on
> these packages). Removing an required package may cause your
> system to become totally broken and you may not even be able to
> use dpkg to put things back, so only do so if you know what you
> are doing. Systems with only the required packages are probably
> unusable, but they do have enough functionality to allow the
> sysadmin to boot and install more software.
>
> important
>
> 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.[4] Other packages without which the system will not run
> well or be usable must also have priority important. This does
> not include Emacs, the X Window System, TeX or any other large
> applications. The important packages are just a bare minimum of
> commonly-expected and necessary tools.
>
> standard
>
> These packages provide a reasonably small but not too limited
> character-mode system. This is what will be installed by default
> if the user doesn't select anything else. It doesn't include
> many large applications.
>
> optional
>
> (In a sense everything that isn't required is optional, but
> that's not what is meant here.) This is all the software that
> you might reasonably want to install if you didn't know what it
> was and don't have specialized requirements. This is a much
> larger system and includes the X Window System, a full TeX
> distribution, and many applications. Note that optional packages
> should not conflict with each other.
>
> extra
>
> This contains all packages that conflict with others with
> required, important, standard or optional priorities, or are
> only likely to be useful if you already know what they are or
> have specialized requirements.
Interesting; thanks! I would be thinking of, then, all the packages in
"required" and "important". Perhaps "standard". What does the
installer do now, if tasksel is not used?
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