Re: change proposal for handling of Depends: field in task files

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Ole Streicher]
> The number of blends is countable: I personally like the idea to first
> replace all "Depends" with "Recommends" in all tasks files, and then
> change the behaviour of the "blends-dev" package.
>
> We should also introduce a format identifier to make future changes
> easier; so my proposal would be:
>
> 1. We write a (maybe preliminary) format description and publish it
> under a well-defined URL
>
> 2. We create bugs for all known build-dependencies of blends-dev to
> 2.1 'sed s/^Depends:/Recommends:/ -i tasks/*`
> 2.2 insert a "Format: https://blends.d.o/format"; as first line to
>     indicate that the new format is used
>
> 3. Once all switched (should be not that difficult, due to the
>  straightforward change), we upload a new version of blends-dev that
>  checks the format id and
>  a) either exits with error if it is not there or a wrong one
>  b) prints a depretation warning and proceeds with the old style in that
>     case
>  Because of the trivial change, I would prefer a).

What about doing it the other way around, and change behaviour of
blends-dev for the tasks with a format line and leave the old behaviour
as it is for those without it?  This will be more like debhelper
compatiblity levels, and we can handle many different behaviours without
breaking existing packages.

This way the debian-edu package could set 'Format: .../format/2' or
similar to get the new behaviour, and the others might migrate at their
own leisure.

-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen