Re: Bug#64438: RCS should be in `optional' or `extra', not `standard'
On Sun, May 21, 2000 at 02:48:20AM -0700, vulture wrote:
> RCS is generally not used by anyone other than a number of programmers,
> and thus should probably not be installed with the default system, as it
> currently is. I suggest it be placed in `extra' (as it is a
> special-purpose package), or `optional'.
It certainly shouldn't be extra. Only in unusual circumstances should
packages be in extra, generally where a package conflicts with a standard or
higher priority package or where installing a package could actually be
harmful if you don't know what you are doing. Even fairly specialised things
such as pcb, scilab and libvoxel0 are optional.
Whether it should be optional I don't know. My feeling is that standard is
sensible. The definition of standard is that "These packages provide a
reasonably small but not too limited character-mode system."; I would expect
such a system to have rcs, my only slight worry is that at half a meg it's a
little on the large side[1].
A large proportion of debian users are hackers who would be likely to use
rcs (if they don't use cvs instead, of course). And it's not only useful to
programmers; a lot of people keep config files in it, and it's very useful
for any kind of document (I used it for my final year project report when I
was at university).
However, if the general consensus is that optional is the right place for
it, I've got no problem with moving it. That's why I'm ccing debian-devel on
this mail.
[1] This could be reduced easily by moving the huge chunks of common code in
the various rcs programs into a shared library. I must try that some time: a
few minutes playing with the makefile should be all I need to do.
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