Re: new tags for RPM

[Erik Troan <ewt redhat com>]

On Wed, 29 Nov 2000, Alfredo Kengi Kojima wrote:

> RPMTAG_ESSENTIAL - a boolean flag telling whether this
> package is essential for the system to be bootable/usable
> (like glibc, bash etc)  Removal of packages with this
> flag could be denied without the --force or equivalent
> option... or not, dunno.

Who gets to decide this? Bash is hardly essential for a Linux system, even
though most use it. Proper package dependencies make this moot (try to
rpm -e bash on your ssytem to see what I mean).

> RPMTAG_IMPORTANCE - tells how important the package is,
> in the same fashion as dpkg's Priority tag. Values for
> it could be numerical constants, like:
> RPMIMPORT_IMPORTANT 5
> RPMIMPORT_REQUIRED  4
> RPMIMPORT_STANDARD  3
> RPMIMPORT_OPTIONAL  2
> RPMIMPORT_EXTRA     1

Who decides what's important and what's not? This is awfully arbitrary, and
it's not clear that this would add real value to users, rather then just
confusion.

Erik

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