Control: severity -1 minor On Fri, Oct 25, 2024 at 09:09:00AM +0200, Helmut Grohne wrote: > In essence, I argue that zless is optional functionality and not covered > by the policy text. If it were, we'd quickly find a pile of other policy > violations of the same kind hinting that maybe policy is not up to date > with reality and this actually constitutes a bug in policy.
I agree. Given the current gzip maintainer seems busy, I'll act and move this bug to severity minor. > > Either gzip should promote "less" to a dependency, or zless should be > > split into a separate package that is not marked as essential. Given > > that zless is already part of gzip's functionality, I do not believe > > that splitting it out is an option because "any capability added to an > > essential package ... creates an obligation to support that capability > > as part of the Essential set in perpetuity." > > Splitting quite definitely is an option. [..] > It's a lot of work, but it is practically feasible. However, > adding a zless package for a 2kb shell script may not be the best use of > our resources as package metadata produces a cost to every installation. That, and also zless sees updates every now and then, f.e. in the new 1.13 upstream release. Coordinating such updates between gzip and less seems like a lot of work for very little gain. Chris
