On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 07:30:57PM +0100, Matthias Urlichs wrote: > That's obvious. What is not so obvious, to me, is why we would still > want the current policy in the first place, given that everything(?) > is resolved via dependencies these days.
Maybe because current policy allows one to take the following set of packages: + Packages of required priority. * Packages of important or higher priority. * Packages of standard or higher priority. and all those sets are self-consistent (i.e. they don't have dependencies outside the set). I think this is a useful and nice property, but I don't know how many people rely on it. > The only practical effect of these priorities I can recognize is that > apt* refuses to remove Essential packages without asking a question > which reminds me what the Shift key is for.¹² Minor clarification: Essential is a flag, not a priority. Essential packages are almost always required, but they may also be extra if they Conflicts/Replaces an already existing essential package, as an alternate implementation for the same functionality (not that there are a lot of packages like that, but they are not excluded by policy). In either case, it is the essential flag, not the required priority, what makes apt-get to ask you enter the phrase "yes, i agree this is very bad". Thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-policy-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141030105116.ga2...@cantor.unex.es
