On Sun, Nov 28, 1999 at 12:01:44AM -0700, Bdale Garbee wrote: > There needs to be a canonical list of the packages that are part of the > build-essential set *somewhere*.
Why? The point of the current way is to reduce the risk of having an outdated authoritative list of build-essential packages. *And* it makes it possible for us to update the list without going through the policy amendment procedure every time something changes in the build setup. It is my intention to keep the list as accurate as I can, but I don't like to mention specific packages in policy. That's another reason why build-essential is not authoritative. This all was discussed when the build-time dependency spec was being hammered out on -policy. > The fact that the policy is vague It is not vague. The definition is (or at least attempts to be) unambiguous. It takes a little effort to find out what the set actually is, but presumably you cannot arrive in two different sets based on that definition. The build-essential package is there to provide you a precalcualated set. However, if I made a mistake in determining the set, the mistake is not automatically part of policy. This is yet another point for the current arrangement. > and the > list in your package carries a wimp-out disclaimer in combination fails to > meet this need. I rephrased the disclaimer a little for build-essential 2, which is in Incoming. Is it satisfactory now? If not, can you suggest a better wording? > It seems that what you are really saying is that this is another bug in the > policy. No, I am saying that the arrangement is like this by design, not by accident. -- %%% Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho % [EMAIL PROTECTED] % http://www.iki.fi/gaia/ %%% "" (John Cage)
