Bug#50832: AMENDMENT] Clarify meaning of Essential: yes

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Anthony Towns wrote:

> +    Since dpkg will upgrade other packages while an _essential_
                  ^^^^
This "will" should be really "may".

> +    package is in an unconfigured state, all _essential_ packages must
> +    supply all their core functionality even when unconfigured. If the
> +    package cannot satisfy this requirement it should not be tagged
> +    as essential, and any packages depending on this packages should
> +    instead have explicit Depends: or Pre-Depends: fields as appropriate.

I'm glad that someone proposed this, but first we should ask ourselves the
following stupid question, just in case: Have we *actually* verified that
all the current essential packages (save, possibly current bash) comply
with this?

BTW: I hope this clarification about essential will help APT not to be so
paranoid by not configuring every essential package just after unpacking
them. If APT is changed in this way, I guess upgrades will be as smooth
and fast as they can really be (i.e. as fast as the old FTP method when
there are not predependency problems).

Thanks.

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