why does setup keep trying to install non-required packages?

[Ken Brown]

On 8/11/2013 3:16 AM, Andrew Schulman wrote:
> Fairly often when I run setup just for updates, it selects new packages for
> installation that I haven't selected and that aren't required by any of my
> other packages.
>
> Right now setup wants to install the login package.  I didn't select it,
> and if I unselect it the installation continues without any problem. It
> happened in setup-x86, and now setup-x86_64 wants to do it too.  I try to
> keep my installation slim, so I don't want setup to add new packages that
> aren't required and that I didn't select.
>
> Has anyone else observed this?  Know the reason?  Are they new packages,
> and setup assumes I want all new packages?

login is in the Base category and so is installed by default.  It was 
only recently added to the 64-bit distro, but I think it's been in x86 
for a long time.  The files on sourceware date from 2009.

As far as I know, only things in Base and Misc (and their dependencies) 
get installed by default.  (And packages in Misc are usually there by 
mistake, because a maintainer forgot to provide a setup.hint.)  I 
haven't observed any exceptions to this.

Ken