Package: lintian Version: 2.5.46 Severity: wishlist Now that Lintian no longer warns about dependencies on packages with lower priorities, I think it would make sense for Lintian to warn about library packages with excessively high priorities. In general, a library package should only get pulled in on a system because some other package depends on it; no library package needs installation on a system where nothing uses it. Given that, I don't think it makes sense for any library package to have a priority higher than "optional".
More concretely: I'd propose a warning on packages in section "libs" with names matching "^lib.*" and not "-bin$", that have a priority of "required", "important", or "standard". I've reviewed every single package in Debian that would match that rule, and I can confirm that it would produce zero false positives. -- System Information: Debian Release: stretch/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 4.7.0-rc7-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages lintian depends on: ii binutils 2.27-5 ii bzip2 1.0.6-8 ii diffstat 1.61-1 ii file 1:5.28-4 ii gettext 0.19.8.1-1 ii hardening-includes 2.8+nmu2 ii intltool-debian 0.35.0+20060710.4 ii libapt-pkg-perl 0.1.29+b5 ii libarchive-zip-perl 1.59-1 ii libclass-accessor-perl 0.34-1 ii libclone-perl 0.38-2 ii libdata-alias-perl 1.20-1+b1 ii libdpkg-perl 1.18.10 ii libemail-valid-perl 1.200-1 ii libfile-basedir-perl 0.07-1 ii libipc-run-perl 0.94-1 ii liblist-moreutils-perl 0.416-1 ii libparse-debianchangelog-perl 1.2.0-10 ii libperl5.22 [libdigest-sha-perl] 5.22.2-3 ii libtext-levenshtein-perl 0.13-1 ii libtimedate-perl 2.3000-2 ii liburi-perl 1.71-1 ii libyaml-libyaml-perl 0.41-6+b1 ii man-db 2.7.5-1 ii patchutils 0.3.4-1 ii perl 5.22.2-3 ii t1utils 1.39-2 ii xz-utils 5.1.1alpha+20120614-2.1 Versions of packages lintian recommends: ii dpkg 1.18.10 pn libperlio-gzip-perl <none> ii perl 5.22.2-3 ii perl-modules-5.22 [libautodie-perl] 5.22.2-3 Versions of packages lintian suggests: pn binutils-multiarch <none> ii dpkg-dev 1.18.10 ii libhtml-parser-perl 3.72-2 pn libtext-template-perl <none> -- no debconf information
