Out of interest I've checked the state of sid vs buster debootstrap --variant=minbase chroots to see if it's been growing while nobody has been paying attention. Apparently we have a couple of regressions. Sharing this in case someone else is interested in the result (or atleast hoping to wake someones interest so they fix it so I can be lazy ;-P).
First here's a diff between buster-minbase and sid-minbase package list: $ diff -u buster-minbase-pkg.list sid-minbase-pkg.list | grep '^[+-]' --- buster-minbase-pkg.list 2020-01-01 13:53:54.528579149 +0100 +++ sid-minbase-pkg.list 2020-01-01 13:51:36.656253717 +0100 -gcc-8-base:amd64 install +gcc-9-base:amd64 install +libcrypt1:amd64 install -libhogweed4:amd64 install +libhogweed5:amd64 install -libnettle6:amd64 install +libnettle7:amd64 install +libpcre2-8-0:amd64 install +logsave install +lsb-base install My analysis of this follows: Replacements (diff noise): gcc-8-base -> gcc-9-base libhogweed4 -> libhogweed5 libnettle6 -> libnettle7 Package splits (not really regressions): libcrypt1 -> split from glibc (pulled in by libc6, login, passwd) logsave -> split from e2fsprogs (pulled in by e2fsprogs - which is, since buster, deinstallable!) New (regressions): libpcre2-8-0 pulled in by libselinux1 - several core packages have moved to pcre2, so this is basically an unfinished libpcre(3) -> libpcre2 replacement. - grep should also move over so libpcre3 is no longer needed. Already reported in #907652 - (outside minbase there are however many other packages that will also need porting, eg. glib. Thus it might be hard to avoid having both PCRE libraries installed for a long time ahead.) lsb-base pulled in by sysvinit-utils - Already reported in #946399 - it might however finally be time to tackle the bigger task of making sysvinit-utils non-essential, see #851747. I'm tempted but will post details in a separate mail if I get motivated enough. Please reach out if you're interested in helping out! I've given this plenty of thought over the years so have a pretty good idea about it. Regards, Andreas Henriksson