Hi,
On Mon, 3 Nov 2014 20:37:26 +1000 Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au> wrote:
> 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.
I actually like aj's proposed solution for another reason that is not
achievable via a local dummy package: currently apt hardcodes that it treats
itself as Essential:yes and the proposed solution allows the user to influence
this behaviour.
So instead of seeing aj's patch as a way to add more package names to what apt
treats as Essential:yes (something which can certainly be achieved via a local
dummy package), I see it as a way to make currently hardcoded apt behaviour
(apt treating itself as Essential:yes) configurable by the user.
Not having apt treat itself as Essential:yes is important for the following
scenarios:
- use the EDSP interface to generate installation sets similar to what can
already be done with tools like dose3. Currently these sets will always
include apt which makes the solution less useful.
- use multistrap to create a very minimal chroot (i.e. without apt). Currently
multistrap is unable to create a chroot that does not contain apt due to
this limitation of apt.
> > 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)
I'm also not very familiar with apt-mark but above two scenarios would be much
more complicated to achieve if one had to go through apt-mark first. Using the
apt configuration would make both of the above two scenarios very simple to
implement, so I think a configuration variable similar to the one proposed by
aj might be a good way forward.
Thanks!
cheers, josch
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