Package: dselect
Version: 1.14.7
Severity: normal
Tags: d-i
dselect's priority was recently dropped from required to important
(#452652), but important is still a much-inflated priority (so is
standard -- optional would be ok). dselect is not the kind of core unix
tool that policy defines as candidates for important.
It made sense for dselect to be required priority when it was widely
used to install and upgrade systems (in the early ninties). It made no
sense to drop it from required to important now that it does not.
I don't expect removal of dselect from important to be contoversial,
although someone is sure to pipe up and say but I use dselect! :-)
Boring statistical justification follows just in case:
Rough reading of the nunbers from dselect's popcon graph suggests that
fewer than 1 in 10 systems with dselect installed actually regularly use
it. Aptitude is used by roughly twice as many systems, as is synaptic,
and apt is regularly used by 6/7ths of all systems. Moreover, while the
number of popcon submissions has tripled since the release of etch,
and the number users of the other package managers has similarly spiked,
the number of systems using dselect has remained flat.
http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php?packages=dselect+aptitude+apt+synaptic+kpackageshow_installed=onshow_vote=onwant_legend=onwant_ticks=onfrom_date=2007-04-01to_date=hlght_date=date_fmt=%25Y-%25mbeenhere=1
So most people who use dselect already had it installed before etch was
released, and the majority of new installs are unnecessarily installing
dselect. While we couldn't fix that for etch, due to the dpkg depenency,
we can fix it for lenny, and the best time to fix it would be now.
--
see shy jo
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