Re: Processed: It is not.

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

Jason Gunthorpe writes:
> Subject: It is not.

Please elaborate. Just saying "It is not" does not give much info, IMHO.

I will cut and paste part of Message-ID: <E10HJeU-0000EI-00@localhost>
from debian-user:

Updating package status cache...done
Checking system integrity...ok
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gdk-imlib-nonfree1 base
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gdk-imlib1 fvwm2 xf86setup talkd imlib-progs libjpeg62-dev xmanpages
telnetd
  libhtml-parser-perl netpbm telnet nfs-server talk
WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed
This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
  base base base
3 packages upgraded, 13 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 9804k of archives. After unpacking 9637k will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n


I see here that apt prompts with [Y/n] and Y is the default answer.
The great uppercase "WARNING" could then be useless.

Do other access methods allow the user so easily to remove an essential
package? I don't think so. As an example, I have changed my dselect
method from "apt" to "ftp" and I have tried to remove "diff".

This is what happened:

[I]nstall does not remove anything. When I select [R]emove:

running dpkg --pending --remove ...
dpkg: error processing diff (--remove):
 This is an essential package - it should not be removed.
Errors were encountered while processing:
 diff

dpkg --remove returned error exit status 1.
Press RETURN to continue.

i.e. I would have to remove diff by hand.


If you think this is not a bug in APT, I suppose you think it should be
easy to remove an essential package.

Why does the essential flag exist, then?


Thanks.

-- 
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