Re: Bits from the release team (freeze time line)

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 06:08:03PM +0100, Niels Thykier wrote:
> Britney changes
> ===============
> 
> We have deployed a change in Britney that causes her to pay more
> attention to essential packages.  In particular, all packages now have
> to be co-installable with the essential set.  Previously, a package
> could conflict with a essential package.  It would still be considered
> installable by Britney as long as the transitive dependency closure of
> the package did not (explicitly) require the essential package it
> conflicted with.

Here's the complete list of packages in latest unstable that would
violate this new criterion:

~$ aptitude search '?conflicts(?essential)'
p   systemd-sysv                    - system and service manager - SysV links
p   upstart                         - event-based init daemon

This new criterion would seem to make life difficult for the maintainers
of these and other potential future alternatives to the current set of
essential packages.

In addition to the small mountain of discussion ongoing about init
system defaults, there has also been some discussion on the specific
topic of this conflict (specifially, whether the package named
"sysvinit" should drop the Essential flag, or whether it should become a
metapackage depending on multiple alternative providers of /sbin/init).
The latter discussion unfortunately seems to have been deferred in favor
of the former.

Perhaps, in light of the pending tech-ctte decision of doom, it might
make sense to defer enabling this new criterion until at least that
point, to ensure that the maintainers of these two packages can continue
to maintain them and provide upgraded versions?  (To the extent other
external factors have not already prevented proper maintenance of those
packages, such as the unmodified packaging of new upstream versions with
useful new features.)

Or, will there be a testing migration exception for packages which
already exist in testing, which both of these do?

- Josh Triplett