On Mon 15 May 2023 at 16:38:29 (+0200), Vincent Lefevre wrote: > On 2023-05-15 08:36:41 -0500, David Wright wrote: > > On Mon 15 May 2023 at 12:51:55 (+0200), Vincent Lefevre wrote: > > > Under Debian/unstable, i.e. more much recent than stretch: > > > > > > zira:~> dpkg -s net-tools > > > Package: net-tools > > > Status: install ok installed > > > Priority: important > > > [...] > > > > > > This is still priority important! > > > > Not at all; AFAICT, the /internal/ Priority of the package has never > > changed. > > But this is what the user sees. > > > (Just guessing: if you installed it, you need it, and better > > hang on to it.) > > Wrong. It got installed automatically. I suppose that this is because > this was like that in the past, when I installed the machine in 2015, > thus before stretch was out.
Of course, how stupid of me—I should have known that from your post about a system running sid (quoted above in its entirety). > I suspect that it wasn't removed because > of the remaining "Recommends" from pbuilder: > > zira:~> aptitude why net-tools > i pbuilder Recommends net-tools | iproute2 > > Note: iproute2 is installed too, but net-tools gets the preference. > This "Recommends" is rather strange if iproute2 is supposed to be > better! That's a very odd recommendation: it's difficult to envisage someone building packages on a system that doesn't have all the packages with Priority important already installed. And I haven't seen where any ranking should be understood from the ordering of Recommends alternatives. And AIUI aptitude why picks an arbitrary choice from equally strong dependencies (sensu lato). There may be others present. You say your system is pre-stretch, ie jessie. That means that you will have had both iproute2 and net-tools installed, as in jessie they are both ranked important. AFAICT iproute2 has never been ranked lower than that, and its predecessor, iproute, was important as far back as lenny. (Earlier than that, it could only be optional, because you needed various options to have been compiled into the kernel.) As far as net-tools's survival is concerned, that's up to you. Debian gives you some tools to help remove cruft, but aggressive removal from systems could lead to scripts breaking and so on, particularly where there are Recommends in play. Cheers, David.
