Bug#1077764: Ruling request on os-release specification implementation

Hi Luca,

On Fri, Aug 02, 2024 at 04:17:43PM +0100, Luca Boccassi wrote:
> Validating is of course necessary. If the worry is around changing the
> dependencies of base-files, I would be happy to carry the dependency on
> a new os-release binary package in init-system-helpers, which is
> already Essential: yes. I already did something similar in Bookworm to
> force all installations to become usrmerged, and I do not recall issues
> with the bootstrapping order. This would be even easier in practice as
> the new package would have a single file, no maintainer scripts, no
> dependencies and no build dependencies. Would that solve your concerns?

No. You need to decide whether /etc/os-release is to be essential or
not.

If it is, then your proposed dependency in init-system-helpers does not
cut it, because I can simply upgrade base-files before
init-system-helpers and then my /etc/os-release is gone violating Debian
policy. A more reliable mechanism for transitioning essential files is
required.

If it is not, then demoting it to Priority:required is an option. In
this case, init-system-helpers should not depend on it and rather the
priority would cause debootstrap to include it. On the flip side, that
means that all users of os-release would need a dependency on
"os-release | base-files (<< ...)". I suppose no work has been done to
gauge the impact of this.

I fear it's not that simple.

Helmut