On Sun, Jul 06, 2008 at 05:36:10PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > On Sun, Jul 06, 2008 at 04:38:26PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > sysvinit is: > > Package: sysvinit > > Essential: yes > > Pre-Depends: [...] sysv-rc (>= 2.86.ds1-1.2) | file-rc (>> 0.7.0), [...] > > And both sysv-rc and file-rc provide invoke-rc.d. Since sysv-rc was split > > out of the sysvinit specifically to allow the alternative with file-rc, I > > think it's still intended that invoke-rc.d be regarded as an Essential > > interface? > Hm, yeah, probably so. > Should we remove the fallback code in the Policy example and recommend > people use invoke-rc.d unconditionally? I think that would be better. It makes me think, though, that we don't really have a place to centrally document what interfaces we consider essential and what ones we don't. Effectively, anything provided by a package that's a pre-dependency of an essential package can be treated as essential by this same logic, with sometimes unintended consequences if a maintainer later wants to drop an interface. So perhaps we should be explicitly blessing invoke-rc.d as virtually-essential, with the consent of the sysvinit maintainers, before changing the example? (For that matter, /usr/bin/awk is another "virtually-essential" interface in this category, and we've held forever that you don't have to depend on awk because base-files does this for us; but that's also not documented in policy, that I can see.) -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
