On Tue, Jan 01, 2008 at 11:49:02AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Colin Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > I don't have time to do the wordsmithing, but I can be your expert
> > witness. debian-installer (specifically, debootstrap) now simply
> > installs everything with Priority: required or Priority: important as
> > the base system, and has done so for some time. See the changelog for
> > debootstrap 0.3.1.
> 
> Okay, that implies to me that we've dropped the whole concept of a
> separate base section in favor of just using priorities.

Right.

> > Unfortunately the list of sections in dak's configuration file appears
> > to be global rather than per-suite, so it might require some work to
> > make base an invalid section from here on without breaking old suites.
> > Removing it from lintian would be good, though.
> 
> I'll queue that up for when the lintian Subversion repository comes back.
> (We really need to move to something distributed for lintian at some
> point.)
> 
> Okay, I think this patch addresses the issues raised in this thread.
> Comments?  Seconds?
> 
> --- orig/policy.sgml
> +++ mod/policy.sgml
> @@ -640,14 +640,14 @@
>       <p>
>         The Debian archive maintainers provide the authoritative
>         list of sections.  At present, they are:
> -       <em>admin</em>, <em>base</em>, <em>comm</em>,
> -       <em>contrib</em>, <em>devel</em>, <em>doc</em>,
> +       <em>admin</em>, <em>comm</em>,
> +       <em>devel</em>, <em>doc</em>,
>         <em>editors</em>, <em>electronics</em>, <em>embedded</em>,
>         <em>games</em>, <em>gnome</em>, <em>graphics</em>,
>         <em>hamradio</em>, <em>interpreters</em>, <em>kde</em>,
>         <em>libs</em>, <em>libdevel</em>, <em>mail</em>,
>         <em>math</em>, <em>misc</em>, <em>net</em>, <em>news</em>,
> -       <em>non-free</em>, <em>oldlibs</em>,
> +       <em>oldlibs</em>,
>         <em>otherosfs</em>, <em>perl</em>, <em>python</em>,
>         <em>science</em>, <em>shells</em>,
>         <em>sound</em>, <em>tex</em>, <em>text</em>,

I second this part.

> @@ -1073,24 +1073,6 @@
>        </sect>
>  
>        <sect>
> -     <heading>Base system</heading>
> -
> -     <p>
> -       The <tt>base system</tt> is a minimum subset of the Debian
> -       GNU/Linux system that is installed before everything else
> -       on a new system. Thus, only very few packages are allowed
> -       to go into the <tt>base</tt> section to keep the required
> -       disk usage very small.
> -     </p>
> -
> -     <p>
> -       Most of these packages will have the priority value
> -       <tt>required</tt> or at least <tt>important</tt>, and many
> -       of them will be tagged <tt>essential</tt> (see below).
> -     </p>
> -      </sect>
> -
> -      <sect>
>       <heading>Essential packages</heading>
>  
>       <p>

Hmm. If this section is removed, then the definition of priorities
should indicate that priorities required plus important make up what's
installed as a base Debian system. I think this would be a bit unclear,
though (you have to know the definition in order to work out where to
find it), and so I think it would be better to keep this section but
update its text. How about this?

        <heading>Base system</heading>
 
        <p>
          The <tt>base system</tt> is a minimum subset of the Debian
          GNU/Linux system that is installed before everything else
-         on a new system. Thus, only very few packages are allowed
-         to go into the <tt>base</tt> section to keep the required
-         disk usage very small.
+         on a new system. Only very few packages are allowed to form
+         part of the base system, in order to keep the required disk
+         usage very small.
        </p>
 
        <p>
-         Most of these packages will have the priority value
-         <tt>required</tt> or at least <tt>important</tt>, and many
-         of them will be tagged <tt>essential</tt> (see below).
+         The base system consists of all those packages with priority
+         <tt>required</tt> or <tt>important</tt>. Many of them will
+         be tagged <tt>essential</tt> (see below).
        </p>
       </sect>
 
       <sect>

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [EMAIL PROTECTED]



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