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Why does Debian not include POSIX-specified commands like bc and ed by default?

From Lone Learner <learnerlone@gmail.com>
Newsgroups linux.debian.user
Subject Why does Debian not include POSIX-specified commands like bc and ed by default?
Date 2020-09-12 09:10 +0200
Message-ID <AO7PA-5RS-7@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
Organization linux.* mail to news gateway

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POSIX.1-2001 Utilities[1] and POSIX.1-2008 Utilities[2] both list the
commands "bc" and "ed" to be part of POSIX.

Yet, in a brand new Debian installation (version 10 for example),
these commands are missing by default:

$ bc
bash: bc: command not found
$ ed
bash: ed: command not found

Why does Debian not include these commands by default? Of course, I
can install them with "apt-get" and I did that.

apt-get install bc ed

The "bc" binary is only 87K in size. The entire package including the
man page and documentation is only 209K in size.

Similarly the "ed" binary is only 55K in size. The entire package is
only 93K in size.

What good reason is there not to include these tiny packages even
though they are specified in POSIX?

[1]: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/idx/utilities.html

[2]: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/idx/utilities.html

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Thread

Why does Debian not include POSIX-specified commands like bc and ed  by default? Lone Learner <learnerlone@gmail.com> - 2020-09-12 09:10 +0200
  Re: Why does Debian not include POSIX-specified commands like bc  and ed by default? Fabrice Bauzac <noon@mykolab.com> - 2020-09-12 10:00 +0200
  Re: Why does Debian not include POSIX-specified commands like bc and  ed by default? Alex Mestiashvili <amestia@rsh2.donotuse.de> - 2020-09-12 10:20 +0200
  Re: Why does Debian not include POSIX-specified commands like bc and  ed by default? Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> - 2020-09-12 15:00 +0200
    Re: Why does Debian not include POSIX-specified commands like bc and  ed by default? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-09-17 03:10 +0200

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