Subject: Packages that shouldn't be `Essential'

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 96 13:42 BST

The `Essential: yes' control file field should not be used unless
removing a package really will completely hose the system; nor should
it be used for a shared library package - the dependencies will
prevent its premature removal, and we need to be able to remove it
when it has been superseded.

I'm going to report bugs of the form `this package should not be
marked as Essential' against the following list of packages:

adduser, ae, fdflush, kbd, modules[*], ncurses3.0, passwd, setserial,
timezone.

[*] modules will probably need a test in their prerm to see if it is
really safe to remove - for example it might check to see whether
there were any kernel modules loaded or whether the kernel supports
them.  If the kernel doesn't then the user can be assumed to know what
they're doing.

Ian.

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From: Guy Maor <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 16:17:14 -0500 (CDT)

On Tue, 16 Jul 1996, Ian Jackson wrote:

> The `Essential: yes' control file field should not be used [...]
> for a shared library package
>
> I'm going to report bugs against [...]

What about the four base libraries?

Guy

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From: Dominik Kubla <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 18:15:37 +0200

Hi!

> adduser, ae, fdflush, kbd, modules[*], ncurses3.0, passwd, setserial,
                         ^
                         |
                         +--- will be fixed in the next release.

Dominik

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From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 96 21:18 BST

Guy Maor writes ("Re: Packages that shouldn't be `Essential'"):
...
> What about the four base libraries?

They aren't marked as essential, quite correctly.

Ian.