Hey there :) Just a regular admin here, nothing fancy. Anyways, I see
that Bash is current Essential: yes. I was curious; will this change? I
know that a few things(ldd, sensible-*) use Bash explictly. Have you
considered talking with those people, so that Bash can be downgraded
from Essential: yes? Or do you even think such an undertaking is
worthwhile?

Thanks - and good package ;)

Hello,

Marking bash as Essential is justificated by policy11.4, which reads:

  The standard shell interpreter /bin/sh can be a symbolic link to any
POSIX
   compatible shell, if echo -n does not generate a newline.[40] Thus,
shell
   scripts specifying /bin/sh as interpreter should only use POSIX
features.
   If a script requires non-POSIX features from the shell interpreter, the
   appropriate shell must be specified in the first line of the script
(e.g.,
   #!/bin/bash) and the package must depend on the package providing the
   shell (unless the shell package is marked `Essential', as in the case of
   bash).

   You may wish to restrict your script to POSIX features when possible so
   that it may use /bin/sh as its interpreter. If your script works with
ash,
   it's probably POSIX compliant, but if you are in doubt, use /bin/bash.

Since bash has been Essential for ages, every package with BASHisms in its
{post|pre}{inst|rm} scripts would use /bin/bash as interpreter. This
includes some
of my packages; i don't think it's viable to unmark the Essential tag.

Also Bash must be part of the base_system tarballs, since we can't manage
alternatives
here... well having different tarballs each with a different shell is IMHO
out of question

Regards,