Bug#354507: libkpathsea3 should be removed

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at 12:44:19PM +0100, Florent Rougon wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
>> 
>> > Package: libkpathsea3
>> > Version: 2.1-1
>> > Severity: normal
>> >
>> >
>> > The only reason for shipping with both libkpathsea3 and libkpathsea4
>> > was to work around one of the shortcomings of testings.
>> 
>> IIRC, Frank wanted to have no package using libkpathsea3 in etch but
>> still let it available for users, and remove it in etch+1.
>
> I'm not understanding the rationale for "not removing before etch+1":
> - it has zero use inside Debian

Or rather, it should have zero use until etch is frozen, right.

> - people using self-compiled programs linked with libkpathsea (which 
>   should be quite rare) can simply keep libkpathsea3 on their system
>   no matter that it's removed from etch
> - Debian doesn't keep two so-version of other libraries even in cases of
>   more popular libraries

I think that we should not decide about the removal of libkpathsea3
before we have managed to make it superfluous in Debian.  Consequently,
I agree that my previous decision "keep in etch" was also wrong.  But I
think we should wait until we know whether migrating Debian packages to
libkpathsea4 presents any problems.  If it does, we can expect other old
stuff around outside Debian that might still need it.

One could argue that even then we can safely remove it, since most
packages come with a copy of the kpathsea sources if they need it.
Well, okay, let's remove it.  But let's first migrate those packages. 

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)