Package: debian-policy Version: 4.5.0.0 Severity: normal Hi!
This was brought up on debian-devel, and I think it needs to be updated/corrected in the policy manual: On Fri, 2020-01-17 at 12:21:11 +0100, Guillem Jover wrote: > On Fri, 2020-01-17 at 11:12:50 +0100, Ansgar wrote: > > Johannes Schauer writes: > > > My advice would also be to switch from debootstrap to mmdebstrap because > > > the > > > latter is able to create a chroot with only Essential:yes packages in it > > > while > > > debootstrap includes Priority:required packages as well. Alternatively, > > > debootstrap could gain a variant only installing Essential:yes packages > > > and > > > their dependencies (why doesn't it have that already?). > > > > Debian doesn't support systems that don't have "required" packages > > installed. So buildds should have them installed. > > If these statements are based on the policy quote below, then I do > not agree. I don't see why e2fsprogs would need to be installed on > a chroot, as long as there's nothing depending on it, for example. > > > Policy states: > > "Removing a required package may cause your system to become totally > > broken and you may not even be able to use dpkg to put things back, so > > only do so if you know what you are doing." > > That seems wrong, or inaccurate at best. dpkg should never depend on > anything that is not part of the pseudo-essential set (strictly > speaking only Essential:yes + awk-virtual), or that it depends on > explicitly. So as long as a package has not been forced out, dpkg > must work. > > Removing a required package (that is not Essential:yes) might indeed > render your system broken, but what broken means or in what context is > not qualified there. This could apply to systems that get booted for > example, but not to chroots. A package that relies on another package > that is Priority:required and not Essential:yes, and that it does not > depend on, is just broken. > > Here's the current list of these packages on my system: > > $ aptitude -F '%p' search '~prequired !~E' > debconf > e2fsprogs > gcc-10-base > gcc-9-base > libpam-modules > libpam-modules-bin > libpam-runtime > mawk > mount > passwd > tzdata > > And most of these are actually part of the pseudo-essential set > anyway, and cannot be removed w/o force. > > That passage in policy might have made sense some time ago, when > Priority:required almost matched the pseudo-essential set, and when we > didn't have a separation of "dpkg-essential" and "boot-essential". Regards, Guillem
