On 07/18/2018 09:06 AM, Michael Stone wrote:
On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 08:44:13AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
First I'm looking comparison of required, important, standard,
optional, and extra as package labels [particularly interested in
corner cases]. I've been looking at
[https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/]. I'm not grasping
something. Not sure what ;/
Well, it's hard to answer questions when you don't ask a question. For
the most part the priorities don't matter much, and are largely a
historical curiosity. Extra is gone, standard and important don't mean
much. So most packages are optional, and a few that should be really
hard to remove are required. Being required has the possible advantage
that other packages don't need to explicitly list dependencies on the
required package (but in practice you usually end up with a versioned
libc6 dependency anyway). It does save a bit on the overhead of every
single package having dependencies on /bin/sh and coreutils that the
dependency resolver would then have to consider.
I was, I thought, asking for explicit distinctions between adjacent
priorities. Your reply was that the distinctions were no longer germane.
That, effectively there are now only two, required and optional.
That changes the landscape surrounding a personal project. Which some
might describe as an extremely minimalist Debian. I would rather
describe it as a "proper subset" of Debian for a particular use. That is
why, in another thread, I ask about "Debian from Scratch".
That leads to asking two related questions:
1. How can I get a list of packages tagged as required?
2. What section of the installer installs packages tagged as required?
I assume the answer will, in part, be a referral to some developer
oriented documentation. [My motivation is personal education rather
that creating the next "killer app].
I will then investigate which of my optional packages already have an
explicit dependence on a "required" app. That will allow me to enumerate
which "required" packages *may* actually be unnecessary.
Thank you.
