On Mon, 11 Sep 2023 21:27:09 -0700 Russ Allbery <r...@debian.org> wrote: > Control: retitle -1 Document the Protected field > > Adam Borowski <kilob...@angband.pl> writes: > > On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 02:28:22PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: > > >> Do you have any idea how long we can expect to wait until dpkg supports > >> the field? I would suggest that we wait until dpkg has defined > >> behaviour for the field, as it will make documenting it much easier. > >> It will also allow us to be more confident that there is no serious > >> disagreement about the purpose of the field. > > > Right, let's have dpkg maintainers tell us what they think. > > >> I couldn't find a bug against dpkg, but if there is one, it should > >> probably be set to block this bug. > > > 872587 < 872589, I filed the Policy one first. Block added. > > Per the resolution of #872589, this was implemented as the Protected field > instead. Retitling the bug accordingly. > > The documentation from deb-control(5) is: > > Protected: yes|no > This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes. It denotes > a package that is required mostly for proper booting of the system or > used for custom system-local meta-packages. dpkg(1) or any other > installation tool will not allow a Protected package to be removed (at > least not without using one of the force options). > > It's probably also worth noting the parenthetical comment in the > documentation of Essential: > > Essential: yes|no > This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes. It denotes > a package that is required for the packaging system, for proper > operation of the system in general or during boot (although the latter > should be converted to Protected field instead). dpkg(1) or any other > installation tool will not allow an Essential package to be removed > (at least not without using one of the force options).
I'm still not sure that I inderstand the difference between those two. They seem to accomplish the same thing. Did I miss something? It should also be noted that, as of version 2.117.0, Lintian still gives a warning whenever a binary target has the Protected field set. Martin-Éric
