Bug#767891: apt: Provide ability to manually mark packages as "essential"

[Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au>]

On 3 November 2014 20:30, Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au> wrote:
> On 3 November 2014 20:22, Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org> wrote:
>> A simple way to achieve what you want is to create a local dummy
>> package that depends on the packages you want and is
>> "Essential: yes" or "Important: yes". Important being preferred, since
>> it has less restrictions on installation ordering.
>
> Yeah, I've done that before (and the equivs package is helpful there).
> But it's two somewhat complicated steps (build a package, install a
> local package), for something that seems more like it should be a
> simple configuration step ("these packages are important to me: ...").

Alternatively, it might make sense (from a user/admin's POV) to do it
via 'apt-mark', ie:

  apt-mark important xmonad
  apt-mark essential sysvinit-core

(I'm not really familiar with apt-mark though, particular if it's
something people should feel comfortable relying on)

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au>