#1134775 zlib1g: misaligned Priority: "optional" in override, "required" in d/control

Package:
zlib1g
Source:
zlib1g
Description:
compression library - runtime
Submitter:
Gioele Barabucci
Date:
2026-05-07 04:51:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1134775#5
Date:
2026-04-23 23:44:50 UTC
From:
To:
Dear maintainer(s) of zlib1g,

the override file at https://deb.debian.org/debian/indices/override.sid.main.gz
states that zlib1g has priority "optional", while its debian/control
file states "Priority: required".

Please update debian/control to match the value set by the FTP team.

If you think that the value used in the override is wrong, use the
following command to reassign this bug:

    bts reassign [THIS-BUG-NUMBER] to ftp.debian.org , \
      retitle it "override: zlib1g:libs/required" , \
      user ftp.debian.org@packages.debian.org , \
      usertag it override

Regards,
#1134775#10
Date:
2026-04-28 04:02:24 UTC
From:
To:
Please read these things before submitting them :(  Optional seems
fairly obviously not a sensible priority here.

$ bts reassign 1134775 to ftp.debian.org , \
      retitle it "override: zlib1g:libs/required" , \
      user ftp.debian.org@packages.debian.org , \
      usertag it override
bts reassign: version number ftp.debian.org contains no digits
#1134775#21
Date:
2026-04-28 07:56:34 UTC
From:
To:
Well, I may agree, but the FTP team has a different opinion, it seems,
so who am I to judge? You, as the maintainer, may also have some
historical context that we bystanders lack.

Here it worked flawlessly (devscripts 2.26.7). Maybe you are using an
older version of bts?

Regards,
#1134775#26
Date:
2026-04-28 08:47:12 UTC
From:
To:
Some editorialising such as that might have helped, just the
autogenerated stuff with such obvious issues looks like it was all just
fire and forget.

I'm running stable which has 2.25.15+deb13u1.
#1134775#31
Date:
2026-05-06 15:58:18 UTC
From:
To:
Hi!

Ah, but it is! This was codified in the Debian Policy version 4.0.1,
from its upgrade checklist:

  ,---
  10.23. Version 4.0.1
  ====================

  Released August, 2017.

  2.5
     Priorities are now used only for controlling which packages are
     part of a minimal or standard Debian installation and should be
     selected based on functionality provided directly to users (so
     nearly all shared libraries should have a priority of "optional").
     Packages may now depend on packages with a lower priority.

     The "extra" priority has been deprecated and should be treated as
     equivalent to "optional". All "extra" priorities should be changed
     to "optional". Packages with a priority of "optional" may conflict
     with each other (but packages that both have a priority of
     "standard" or higher still may not conflict).

  […]
  `---

See Debian Policy §2.5 for further details. So it seems clear to me,
this report needs to be reassigned back.

Thanks,
Guillem
#1134775#36
Date:
2026-05-07 00:01:57 UTC
From:
To:
Well, that's really leading to something helpful and clear isn't it :(
#1134775#41
Date:
2026-05-07 00:27:39 UTC
From:
To:
I'm not sure I understand this comment.

Is this about the description in the Debian Policy? If so I guess it
would be nice to clarify the docs.

If this is about the changed role itself for the Priority field, then
the rationale was that because shared libraries are non-user facing
implementation details for the tools linking against them, keeping
their Priority in sync with the tools that depend on them didn't make
much sense and was not really maintainable (and prone to be out-of-sync
and incorrect). It didn't work that well either when the linking was
conditional per arch for example. And the archive overrides have been
this way for a long time, and I don't recall hearing any complaint
about this.

Thanks,
Guillem
#1134775#46
Date:
2026-05-07 01:10:06 UTC
From:
To:
It means that the priority field is basically noise, it does carry a
little bit of meaning but not a meaning that you'd infer from the name
and TBH something that could just be in the override file without any
involvement from the packages.
#1134775#51
Date:
2026-05-07 04:49:28 UTC
From:
To:
with a series of meta-packages such as debian-required, debian-standard.
The FTP team would maintain them and each meta-package would Recommends:
the appropriate set of packages. debian-installer/debootstrap would
still have a declarative/machine-readable way to select which packages
to include in a standard installation.

Override files would however still be needed because the presence of (or
lack of) a package in a suite's override file is how the FTP team
signals dak and its related machinery that that package should be
included in (or excluded from) that suite.

But this is all a story for another day and another bug report.

Regards,