Is htop becoming part of the default install?

I noticed that the htop package for 18.04 is in main, where previous releases had it in universe. This is reflected in the packages index and on Launchpad. Software in main is supported by Canonical, these are usually either part of the default install (or the installer), or widely-used server software.

htop is pretty good, it'd be nice to have it in the default installation.

How can I find more about how and why htop got included in main?

It seems it is not becoming part of the default desktop installation. It is, however, being included in the server image:

$ curl -sL http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-server/daily-live/current/bionic-live-server-amd64.manifest | grep htop
htop    2.1.0-3

It's now a dependency of the ubuntu-server meta-package, so it should be installed when using the standard option in the server image, without needing an internet connection.

Finding more about this was a bit convoluted - there's nothing in htop's package changelogs or on the Launchpad closed bugs list, or on the ubuntu-devel mailing list that seemed related at a glance. Turns out, the related bug report is #1644364 - [MIR] htop - the MIR seems to be "Main Inclusion Review (or Request?)", and not the Mir display, which threw me at first.

The MIR team decides upon whether a package should be promoted to main, and the requests filed on Launchpad for such packages are usually also tagged [MIR]. The process and criteria are described on the Ubuntu Wiki:

• Main Inclusion Requirements (also see the graph of packages where dependencies are not of the required components: component-mismatches)
• Main Inclusion Process

The MIR bugs offers an interesting overview of what's currently happening with the defaults. For example, it looks MP3 support will be available by default!

htop is now officially in ubuntu-server as a default app!

ubuntu-meta (1.413) bionic; urgency=medium

  * Refreshed dependencies
  * Added gnome-bluetooth to desktop-recommends [s390x]
  * Added htop to server
  * Removed doc-base from desktop

 -- Christian Ehrhardt <[email protected]>  Tue, 13 Mar 2018 11:12:35 +0100