On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 03:35:17PM +0000, Steve McIntyre wrote: > Andy wrote: > >I think it's reasonable to ask the maintainers of linux-base (by way of > >a bug report) if there should be an explicit dependency there, but > >perl-base is of "required" priority so it's normally expected to be > >there. > > > >I am not sure what Debian policy is in this regard — perhaps someone > >more knowledgeable will chime in — but possibly packages are not > >expected to declare such dependencies and you may be told that you are > >doing something out of the ordinary (wontfix/notabug). > > Exactly. Priority: required packages are deliberately left out of > explicit dependencies, that's the whole point.
Sorry, no. It's the Essential flag what makes dependencies not to be required. If package A needs package B which is required but not Essential:yes, it still needs the dependency. In this case perl-base is Essential: yes, so if whatever thing that needs perl works ok with perl-base (sorry, did not follow the thread from the beginning), then the dependency would not be needed. Thanks.
