Bug#255969: coreutils: critial files in /bin deleted during dist-upgrade from stable to testing

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

# unconfuse myself
unmerge 255969
quit

Hi,

David Kalnischkies wrote:
>> Brian Frank wrote:

>>> -When running dist-upgrade from stable to testing, many of the important
>>> files in /bin disappeared. I found that they were provided by the
>>> "fileutils" package in stable, but by the "coreutils" package in testing.
>>> Without some of these files (mv, ln, mkdir, etc), the dist-upgrade came to
>>> a screeching halt.
>
> I can't imagine a circumstance in which this could have happened.

Sounds good to me. :)  I was just reading through the merged bugs;
this one is from June, 2004 and I doubt the problem still exists
(though I suppose masochistic types can always try to recreate the
upgrade from that date).

> The only very very very wild wild guess is something like the fixed #590438
> in which the essential is removed too early

Yes, it's possible.  Anyway, this bug seems past the point of
debuggability, so I'll close it with my next message.

> If any version in any repository is essential then the package is essential.
> So for APT a package can only 'loose' its essential flag if you remove
> the archive in which the package is marked as essential.

Sounds sensible to me.  The only edge case I can think of is if
someone has a repository listed in sources.list and does not have any
packages installed from it.