On Tue, 18 Nov 2014, Charles Plessy wrote: > Le Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 03:55:26PM +0100, Santiago Vila a écrit : > Hi Santiago, > > practically speaking, how do you or others use the Optional priority > to check that a package is not directly or transitively conflicting > with another package ? First, according to debcheck > (https://qa.debian.org/debcheck.php?dist=sid&list=main-only-priority&arch=ANY) > there are thousands of packages whose Priority setting violates the > current policy. > > Second, tools such as "apt-get --simulate" are very efficient at > checking if the installation of one package will need or trigger the > removal of another one. In which case would it be more efficient to > check the priority instead, especially given the first point above ?
We can't obviously rely on the current rule if it's violated, but violations of the rule are just a sign that we didn't try hard enough to comply with it, not a sign that the rule is useless and we should drop it. > Can you give concrete examples where the Extra priority has been instrumental > for you as a user or a developer, in a way that has no practical alternative ? > Or said differently, what would break concretely for you if tomorrow the > Optional and Extra priorities were merged ? As it has been pointed out by others, whenever we have a set of mutually conflicting packages performing the same task, the package having optional priority is the one that we recommend among them. It is a way to tell the user "in doubt, use this one". For example, there was a time in which there were several NFS servers available. The only one who survived, nfs-kernel-server, is the only one that was optional, so I installed that one when I needed a NFS server a long time ago. If we had not the extra priority, I would have to look at popularity-contest or similar data. I think that it is a good thing that we have a way to recommend packages which is independent from "what everyone else is using". Thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: https://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
