On Mon, 27 Oct 2014, Michael Tautschnig wrote: > Then maybe take the first sentence in 3.8 Essential packages > instead: "Essential is defined as the minimal set of functionality > that must be available and usable on the system at all times, even > when packages are in the "Unpacked" state." If not this one (and > not the one above), which bit of policy are you then relying on when > you do the chown calls?
My intrepretation of policy regarding essential packages is that *once* that they are configured for the first time, they should continue to work at all times even if they are unconfigured for a while in the middle of an upgrade. This is consistent with the usual meaning of "bootstrap". It's something that you only need to do once, because after that, everything *keeps* working (but only *after* that). Your interpretation of policy is a little bit different. If you ask essential packages to provide its core functionality *even* when they have not been configured for the *first* time, I bet that we would have to rethink the whole essential thing from the beginning. For example, your interpretation would force base-passwd to lose its essential flag, because it can't provide its core functionality only when in unpacked state. Then, according to policy, base-files and *every* other package using any of the system users in any of its maintainer scripts would have to add a "Depends: base-passwd", since they depend on functionality which is only available after base-passwd has been configured. Frankly, I don't think that's what we want. Thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-boot-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/alpine.deb.2.11.1410271555150.8...@cantor.unex.es
