Bug#756023: init: Move "Essential: yes" from init to init-system-helpers

[Andreas Henriksson]

Hello all.

On Thu, May 05, 2016 at 03:49:57PM +0200, Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
> Felipe Sateler writes:
[...]
> > The util-linux maintainer is very much trying to get rid of that
> > dependency (I can't find an online reference, but discussed on IRC),
> > and it is not done only because apt currently does not deal
> > particularly well with versioned Breaks "loops" involving essential
> > packages.
> 
> Hmm, then alternatives include:
> 
>   - Make "sysvinit-utils" essential (not so nice IMHO).
>   - Have "init-system-helpers" depend on it. This makes sure it stays
>     quasi-essential for now.

As already mentioned on IRC but following up here for the record,
sysvinit-utils is actually already Essential: yes.

(Irrelevant, but I've now filed #823569 for switching util-linux
Depends on sysvinit-utils to a Breaks.)

Please also note that I'd like to see sysvinit-utils become
non-essential in a potential soon future. My investigations seems to
suggest that pidof is the only really widely used part of current
(>= stretch) sysvinit-utils, so I've filed #810018 where tracking of
potentially providing procps pidof as an essential package (eg.
procps-base). Other work needed to be able to demote sysvinit-utils to
non-essential are also mentioned in that bug report. (Hopefully
long-term we can even make pidof non-essential as mostly init scripts is
where it's widespead usage comes from, but I don't see those going away
any time soon.)

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson