>>>>> "Santiago" == Santiago Vila <sanv...@debian.org> writes: Santiago> A minimal build essential set provides and generates Santiago> useful information that a build essential set which is not Santiago> so minimal does not provide.
Santiago> For example, some packages have unit tests which depend on Santiago> the information stored on tzdata. In some cases, changes Santiago> in tzdata causes those unit tests to fail. Okay. I don't find that example particularly compelling. I absolutely agree with you we've found such bugs, but I think that the cost of going and adding all the build-depends on required-but-not-build-essential is not worth what I estimate we'd gain from having this extra information. I thin there are a few other reasons we want to keep the build-essential set small: * It reduces the number of packages involved in early freeze * I suspect that there probably are bootstrapping implications. However, neither of those reasons appear very compelling when applied to required packages. I appreciate the work of fixing the packages would be distributed, although I think a significant portion of it would land on the small number of people who do archive-wide QA. Even if it were fully distributed, that work has a real cost.