[buildd-tools-devel] Bug#602571: cannot build due to ESSENTIAL dep phase

[Loïc Minier]

On Sat, Dec 04, 2010, Roger Leigh wrote:
> Would it be rather simpler, and a more general solution, to just
> add a configuration option to disable installation of build essential,
> to allow disabling on any system?  You could then just put
> 
>   $install_build_essential = 0;

 While this particular option might make sense on its own right, it's
 kind of orthogonal to the problem at hand: sysvinit is listed in
 build-essential packages but isn't actually build-essential.  It's
 really a bug in the build-essential package in Ubuntu, but it's
 intrusive to fix it in build-essential in very old releases, hence the
 sbuild workaround.

 IOW, it would be desirable to be able to keep install_build_essential=1
 even if targetting broken Ubuntu releases.  Also you will have to
 support this config option forever.

On Sat, Dec 04, 2010, Roger Leigh wrote:
> Are all Ubuntu releases affected, or just the later ones?  When was
> sysvinit removed?

 The current Ubuntu development release (natty, to be 11.04) is not
 affected anymore as I fixed build-essential there, but pretty much all
 the maintained one are affected.  We still support 6.06 (dapper) which
 will be end-of-lifed in 2011/06 (+5y), and it didn't have upstart, but
 all releases since 6.06 had upstart:
   upstart |    0.3.9-2 |         hardy | source, amd64, i386
   upstart |    0.3.9-8 |        jaunty | source, amd64, i386
   upstart |   0.6.3-10 |        karmic | source, amd64, i386
   upstart |    0.6.5-6 |         lucid | source, amd64, i386
   upstart |    0.6.6-3 |      maverick | source, amd64, i386
 in particular 10.04 (lucid), which is to be supported until 2015/04.

 I'm not sure 6.06 is a big issue, but Jamie is in the Ubuntu security
 team, so he can comment about that one.  My guess is that sysvinit is
 already installed in the chroot anyway, so the sysvinit workaround
 doesn't hurt.

-- 
Loïc Minier