Re: mawk is a required package but I have replaced it with gawk
I was thinking that to have a valid debian system, all required packages must be installed. That's true for essential package, but required != essential. /usr/share/doc/debian/FAQ/debian-faq.en.txt.gz: 6.7. What is a _Required_, _Important_, _Standard_, _Optional_, or _Extra_ package? Each Debian package is assigned a _priority_ by the distribution maintainers, as an aid to the package management system. The priorities are: * _Required_: packages that are necessary for the proper functioning of the system. This includes all tools that are necessary to repair system defects. You must not remove these packages or your system may become totally broken and you may probably not even be able to use dpkg to put things back. I will file a bug to get essential added to this file. It is mentioned in debian-policy but not here. Anyway, can't blame some users for getting the impression that if one doesn't accept mawk, their system will be in serious shape, whereas it really should be: if one has no version of awk at all, their system will be in serious shape.
Re: mawk is a required package but I have replaced it with gawk
Dan Jacobson wrote: I was thinking that to have a valid debian system, all required packages must be installed. That's true for essential package, but required != essential. /usr/share/doc/debian/FAQ/debian-faq.en.txt.gz: 6.7. What is a _Required_, _Important_, _Standard_, _Optional_, or _Extra_ package? Each Debian package is assigned a _priority_ by the distribution maintainers, as an aid to the package management system. The priorities are: * _Required_: packages that are necessary for the proper functioning of the system. This includes all tools that are necessary to repair system defects. You must not remove these packages or your system may become totally broken and you may probably not even be able to use dpkg to put things back. This is more true for essential packages, and maybe not always accurate for required packages that are not essential. I will file a bug to get essential added to this file. It is mentioned in debian-policy but not here. Rmember that essential is not a priority but a flag. Most required packages have this flag, but not all of them.
Re: mawk is a required package but I have replaced it with gawk
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 03:45:59AM +0800, Dan Jacobson wrote: I was thinking that to have a valid debian system, all required packages must be installed. That's true for essential package, but required != essential. /usr/share/doc/debian/FAQ/debian-faq.en.txt.gz: 6.7. What is a _Required_, _Important_, _Standard_, _Optional_, or _Extra_ package? Each Debian package is assigned a _priority_ by the distribution maintainers, as an aid to the package management system. The priorities are: * _Required_: packages that are necessary for the proper functioning of the system. This includes all tools that are necessary to repair system defects. You must not remove these packages or your system may become totally broken and you may probably not even be able to use dpkg to put things back. I will file a bug to get essential added to this file. It is mentioned in debian-policy but not here. Please do the same to debian-reference since it shares the same contents in its Chapter 2. Patch will be nice. FYI: FAQ oe my documents, these are secondary information. So use them with care and contribute their improvement :-) THX.
