Hi,

Russ Allbery writes:
> Ansgar Burchardt <ans...@debian.org> writes:
>> I discussed this a bit on IRC with the other ftp-masters and we came to
>> this summary:
[...]
>> 2) We wonder if the 'standard' priority can also be dropped: as far as
>>    we know, it is used only by the "standard" task and it might make
>>    sense to treat it the same as other tasks.
>>    (Depending on what works better for the installer team.)
>
> Given KiBi's reply, I'll leave 2 out for now.

Sure.

> Given the necessary wording changes, I don't think we can separate 0 and 1
> very easily, so I'll just propose wording for both (even though we forked
> the Policy bugs into two).  Here's a wording proposal based on Adam
> Borowski's wording with a bit of (hopefully correct) tightening.
>
> Note that this also says that no two packages that both have a priority of
> standard or higher may conflict.  I think that's a logical consequence of
> the use of priorities, and didn't want to lose that completely when that
> requirement was dropped from optional.

I agree.  Tools like debootstrap have no useful way to decide how to
resolve such conflicts and must work non-interactively.

> diff --git a/policy.xml b/policy.xml
> index ace6a3b..be458cd 100644
> --- a/policy.xml
> +++ b/policy.xml
> @@ -837,11 +837,33 @@
>        <title>Priorities</title>
>  
>        <para>
> -        Each package should have a <emphasis>priority</emphasis> value,
> -        which is included in the package's <emphasis>control
> -        record</emphasis> (see <xref linkend="s-f-Priority"/>).  This
> -        information is used by the Debian package management tools to
> -        separate high-priority packages from less-important packages.
> +        Each package must have a <emphasis>priority</emphasis> value,
> +        which is set in the metadata for the Debian archive and is also
> +        included in the package's control files (see <xref
> +        linkend="s-f-Priority"/>).  This information is used to control
> +        which packages are included in standard or minimal Debian
> +        installations.
> +      </para>
> +      <para>
> +        Most Debian packages will have a priority of
> +        <literal>optional</literal>.  Priority levels other than
> +        <literal>optional</literal> are only used for packages that should
> +        be included by default in a standard installation of Debian.
> +      </para>
> +      <para>
> +        The priority of a package is determined solely by the
> +        functionality it provides directly to the user.  The priority of a
> +        package should not be increased merely because another
> +        higher-priority package depends on it; instead, the tools used to
> +        construct Debian installations will correctly handle package
> +        dependencies.  In particular, this means that C-like libraries
> +        will almost never have a priority above
> +        <literal>optional</literal>, since they do not provide
> +        functionality directly to users.  However, as an exception, the
> +        maintainers of Debian installers may request an increase of the
> +        priority of a package to resolve installation issues and ensure
> +        that the correct set of packages is included in a standard or
> +        minimal install.
>        </para>
>        <para>
>          The following <emphasis>priority levels</emphasis> are recognized
> @@ -896,19 +922,22 @@
>                installed by default if the user doesn't select anything
>                else.  It doesn't include many large applications.
>              </para>
> +            <para>
> +              No two packages that both have a priority of
> +              <literal>standard</literal> or higher may conflict with each
> +              other.
> +            </para>
>            </listitem>
>          </varlistentry>
>          <varlistentry>
>            <term><literal>optional</literal></term>
>            <listitem>
>              <para>
> -              (In a sense everything that isn't required is optional, but
> -              that's not what is meant here.) This is all the software
> -              that you might reasonably want to install if you didn't know
> -              what it was and don't have specialized requirements.  This
> -              is a much larger system and includes the X Window System, a
> -              full TeX distribution, and many applications.  Note that
> -              optional packages should not conflict with each other.
> +              This is the default priority for the majority of the
> +              archive.  Unless a package should be installed by default on
> +              standard Debian systems, it should have a priority of
> +              <literal>optional</literal>.  Packages with a priority of
> +              <literal>optional</literal> may conflict with each other.
>              </para>
>            </listitem>
>          </varlistentry>
> @@ -916,22 +945,21 @@
>            <term><literal>extra</literal></term>
>            <listitem>
>              <para>
> -              This contains all packages that conflict with others with
> -              required, important, standard or optional priorities, or are
> -              only likely to be useful if you already know what they are
> -              or have specialized requirements (such as packages
> -              containing only detached debugging symbols).
> +              <emphasis>This priority is deprecated.</emphasis>  Use the
> +              <literal>optional</literal> priority instead.
> +            </para>
> +            <para>
> +              The <literal>extra</literal> priority was previously used
> +              for packages that conflicted with other packages and
> +              packages that were only likely to be useful to people with
> +              specialized requirements.  However, this distinction was
> +              somewhat arbitrary, not consistently followed, and not
> +              useful enough to warrant the maintenance effort.
>              </para>
>            </listitem>
>          </varlistentry>
>        </variablelist>
> -      <para>
> -        Packages must not depend on packages with lower priority values
> -        (excluding build-time dependencies).  In order to ensure this, the
> -        priorities of one or more packages may need to be adjusted.
> -      </para>
>      </section>
> -
>    </chapter>
>  
>    <chapter id="ch-binary">

Seconded.

Ansgar

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