Bug#1052133: apt: E: Removing essential system-critical packages is not permitted. This might break the system.

[Thorsten Glaser <tg@mirbsd.de>]

Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues dixit:

>Quoting Thorsten Glaser (2023-09-17 23:03:50)
>> E: Removing essential system-critical packages is not permitted. This might break the system.
>>
>> Used to be that it asks for “Yes, do as I say!”, and this is missing
>> in sid now‽ I kinda need that…
>
>it's documented in "man apt-get" if you search for "essential" you find:
>
>> --allow-remove-essential

oic

>It appears that there are people who will assume that when their computer tells
>them to type “Yes, do as I say!” then that's just what they will do without
>switching their brain on first: https://youtu.be/0506yDSgU7M?t=633

Yeah, you’re caught between a rock and a hard place there, I suppose.

>To prevent this from happening in the future, this was changed to become even
>more difficult and now one has to read the manual and pass the option above
>instead.

The problem is, the last time apt-get told me to look up a switch
to allow something (release name change, IIRC), the manpage did not
have that information at all, let alone easily findable.

Maybe add…

N: See remove-essential in the apt-get(8) manual page for details.

… to that message, as second line?

Thanks,
//mirabilos
-- 
<ch> you introduced a merge commit        │<mika> % g rebase -i HEAD^^
<mika> sorry, no idea and rebasing just fscked │<mika> Segmentation
<ch> should have cloned into a clean repo      │  fault (core dumped)
<ch> if I rebase that now, it's really ugh     │<mika:#grml> wuahhhhhh