Simon, et al, Thank you for your excellent feedback!
On Mon, 5 Jul 2021 at 10:40:28 +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: > On Mon, 05 Jul 2021 at 02:30:00 -0500, Daniel Lewart wrote: > > Comparing important/required/standard packages between > > Buster and Bullseye, I noticed some inconsistencies. > We have been in hard freeze for almost 4 months, so I don't think > now is necessarily the right time to be changing what is in a default > installation of Debian (which is what the boundary between standard and > optional means) without release team approval. No worries. The last thing I want to do is to add stress to the Release Team. > I've cc'd the release team to see what they think. Very good. > I agree with your reasoning for why these packages should be > Priority: optional, and for any that cannot be changed in bullseye, the > beginning of the Debian 12 'bookworm' release cycle would be an excellent > time to make that change. > > If so, should I file one or multiple bugs against: > The ftp.debian.org pseudo-package is the right place to ask for priority > changes ("override changes"): individual packages' maintainers cannot > change this on their own. If you use reportbug, there's a template for > an override change. > It's probably best to Cc the package maintainer > (name_of_pack...@packages.debian.org) using the X-Debbugs-Cc mechanism, > because there is a suggested priority in the package's debian/control, > which the ftp team use as a basis for setting the priority of new packages. > (Yes, it's redundant, and there are probably better ways this could be > controlled, but this is what we have at the moment.) Excellent. Of course, I will wait for Release Team feedback before doing so. > > 1) override: bind9-dnsutils:net/optional > > * Currently net/standard > > * Justification: Buster dnsutils is net/optional > This is essentially asking: should the DNS utilities (dig, nslookup etc.) > be installed by default even if nothing else depends on them? and changing > the answer to that question seems a disruptive thing to be doing during > hard freeze. Agreed. > These have relatively "heavy" dependencies, so they are probably the > highest-impact in terms of reducing the size of a default installation; > but they also seem like the highest-risk in terms of potentially exposing > bugs where packages rely on these utilities without declaring a dependency. > > 2) override: bind9-libs:libs/optional > > 5) override: libreadline8:libs/optional > > * Justification: Debian Policy 2.5 > I agree that shared libraries should be Priority: optional. They will be > pulled in by dependencies if they are needed. > bind9-libs is pulled in by bind9-dnsutils, so there is no point in changing > that priority unless bind9-dnsutils is also changed. bind9-host (standard) Depends: bind9-libs, so bind9-libs would be pulled in anyway. > libreadline8 is quite small, so the impact of installing it unnecessarily > is low. python3-reportbug (standard) Depends: ... Depends: libreadline8, so libreadline8 is installed by default. > > 3) override: gcc-9-base:libs/optional > > 4) override: gcc-10-base:libs/optional > > * Currently libs/required > These are not *really* shared libraries, but the same reasoning applies, > and I agree they should be Priority: optional. > If I'm reading correctly, gcc-9-base is included in default installations > of Debian 11, even though nothing else built by src:gcc-9 is, nicely > demonstrating why Policy ยง2.5 changed to its current contents. This seems > like it's obviously a bug (200K of licenses and documentation are installed > unnecessarily), and unlike the other genuine bugs you've mentioned here, > this one seems low-risk to fix, because gcc-9-base only contains > documentation. Yes, since "standard system utilities" are selected by default. > In practice gcc-10-base will be installed anyway, as a result of libgcc-s1 > depending on it, so that change would have no practical effect right now; > but moving it to Priority: optional would avoid having the same bug as for > gcc-9-base when we upgrade to gcc-11 or later in a future Debian release. Yes, since apt (required) Depends: libgcc-s1, libstdc++6 . > > 6) override: mime-support:oldlibs/optional > > * Currently net/standard > > * Justification: Transitional package > mime-support depends on mailcap (Priority: optional) and media-types > (Priority: standard), so downgrading mime-support to optional would mean > that mailcap (compose(1), edit(1), see(1), print(1)) would not be installed > by default. That seems like it has a risk of exposing bugs where packages > rely on those tools without declaring a dependency. > I agree that this should be oldlibs/optional, but 4 months into hard freeze > doesn't seem like the right time to change it. Agreed. Thank you again! Dan Urbana, Illinois