Subject: Package priority: Extra/Optional

From: [email-masked] (joost witteveen)
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 12:07:24 +0200 (MET DST)

Some time ago, 4th of June, Ian wrote a very clear message
about what the package priorities like Extra/Optional/Required, e.d.
should mean.

I think Ian did a real good job with this message, finally
makeing clear something to me that I've always felt unsure about.

However, in this message, "Extra" is descirbed with:

   - - In order to get something into Extra it has to conflict with
   existing packages, or be very obscure, or very large, or be useable
   only in very specialised circumstances or for specialised
   applications, or have very complicated configuration requirements.
   Preferably several of those reasons would apply.
   
While this seems very strict to me, and probably would only aply to
one in 20 packages or so, I see on master's unstable/bin/Packages file:
   
   $ grep -i "Priority: Extra" Packages|wc -l
       179
   $ grep -i "Priority: Optional" Packages|wc -l
       230
   $ pwd
   /home/ftp/pub/Linux/Debian/unstable/binary-i386

Does this mean that the overrides file should be reworked a lot,
or did I miss something on debian-devel changing the meaning of
"Priority: Extra"?

(maybe dchanges should be changed to have "Optional: as default,
instead of the current "extra").

Thanks,

-- 
joost witteveen
            [email-masked]
          [email-masked]
--
Use Debian/GNU Linux!

---

From: Guy Maor <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 11:30:12 -0500 (CDT)

>    /home/ftp/pub/Linux/Debian/unstable/binary-i386

Most of the extra packages are misfiled.  They were entered into the
package hierarchy before the current uploading mechanism was in place.

I plan to go through the packages, directory by directory, and check
the priorities (and sections).  I'll have this done before 1.2 is
released.

Only appropriate packages are entering extra now.

Guy