Bug#282278: apt mixes essential flag from all sources

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Vincent Lefevre wrote:

> I disagree about the wontfix. You need to look at all the other merged
> bugs, in particular bug 282278, which is about a confusing warning
> message.

For reference:

 Description: The GNU shell programming utilities (transitional package)
  Empty package to facilitate upgrades, can be safely removed.

 # apt-get remove --purge shellutils textutils
[...]
 WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed
 This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!

That was a bug in the package descriptions of the transitional
packages.  A transitional package that is used to satisfy versioned
dependencies should say something like "This is a dummy package to
satisfy dependencies on foo using its old name.  It can safely be
removed if no other package depends on it."  The transitional package
shellutils was in a similar situation:

 Empty package to facilitate upgrades. The essential functionality
 previously provided by shellutils is part of the coreutils package
 now; this package exists to satisfy dependencies (including the
 implicit dependency by all packages in etch) on the old name and
 can be safely removed if no package depends on it.

However, it's possible the warning when removing a package that is
considered essential for this reason and that lacks the Essential: yes
flag should be reworded to make this clearer.  If you have ideas for
that, please unmerge bug 282278 so it can happen.