Package: less
Version: 481-2.1
Severity: wishlist
Hi!
We're doing a lot to trim down high priorities these days. I'd like to
propose one step in the other direction: let's make "less" important.
The Policy says:
# important
# Important programs, including those which one would expect to find on
# any Unix-like system. If the expectation is that an experienced Unix
# person who found it missing would say “What on earth is going on, where
# is foo?”, it must be an important package. Other packages without which
# the system will not run well or be usable must also have priority
# important. This does not include Emacs, the X Window System, TeX or any
# other large applications. The important packages are just a bare
# minimum of commonly-expected and necessary tools.
I might be delusional, but I believe my claim to be "an experienced Unix
person" is not totally unbased. A pager is required for most sysadmin
tasks, especially whenever something goes wrong (which is also when you
might have problems installing additional packages). There's "more" but it
stopped being adequate at least two decades ago.
This is most visible in d-i (well, bumping severity won't produce an udeb,
but it's a good illustration), where any trouble means reading the
installation log. Console 4 has the last page, but d-i being spammy, the
culprit is usually on the next-to-the-last page. Try getting there with
"more" -- after a long bout of holding Space, you're almost guaranteed to
overshoot on the first try. And this is one of environments where you can't
just utter a short curse and "apt install less".
Thus, while less is not absolutely needed (that's priority:required), it
feels to be way above mere priority:standard.
AFAIK a priority change requires a manual edit of the override file, but
obviously this shouldn't be done without the maintainer's approval -- that's
why I'm bothering you first.
Meow!
-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
APT prefers unstable-debug
APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'),
(150, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
Kernel: Linux 4.14.0-rc6-debug-00039-gde7173745fe2 (SMP w/6 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=C.UTF-8
(charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
Versions of packages less depends on:
ii debianutils 4.8.2
ii libc62.24-17
ii libtinfo56.0+20170902-1
less recommends no packages.
less suggests no packages.
-- no debconf information
