On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Anthony Towns wrote:
> + Since dpkg will upgrade other packages while an _essential_
^^^^
This "will" should be really "may".
> + package is in an unconfigured state, all _essential_ packages must
> + supply all their core functionality even when unconfigured. If the
> + package cannot satisfy this requirement it should not be tagged
> + as essential, and any packages depending on this packages should
> + instead have explicit Depends: or Pre-Depends: fields as appropriate.
I'm glad that someone proposed this, but first we should ask ourselves the
following stupid question, just in case: Have we *actually* verified that
all the current essential packages (save, possibly current bash) comply
with this?
BTW: I hope this clarification about essential will help APT not to be so
paranoid by not configuring every essential package just after unpacking
them. If APT is changed in this way, I guess upgrades will be as smooth
and fast as they can really be (i.e. as fast as the old FTP method when
there are not predependency problems).
Thanks.
--
"d313734d6a32fb84d1d004b5705f67de" (a truly random sig)
