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Bug#841294: Overrule maintainer of "global" to package a new upstream version



Ron <ron@debian.org> writes:

...
> That's basically why "just nuke htags now" is starting to look like
> a viable, and even sensible, option.  But it's tricky to know who
> might be upset by that - and we don't have a clear idea of exactly
> what we'd really gain elsewhere from that tradeoff, since most of
> the people saying "I need a new upstream" haven't actually been
> telling us what the real problem is which that fixes, even when I
> asked.

This sounds like, if you were given enough feedback, you'd be willing to
fork this to keep the old functionality available, while servicing the
needs of users of new features -- is that right?

If that is the case, and having read the rest of what you've written, it
seems that the clamour for upgrading to the latest release is a symptom
of not paying sufficient attention to the messy details.

> It's quite possible that some of those would just need a trivial
> patch to what we currently have - but with these latest changes to
> htags, I am feeling more and more like the writing is on the wall
> for its ultimate demise now - even if upstream isn't accepting
> that yet.
>
>
> But I haven't forgotten the hatemail I got for finally killing off
> svgatextmode, a whole decade after its upstream declared it an
> obsolete solution, when kms finally made it impossible to keep it
> working - so I don't underestimate what some people might cling to.

How viable is it to have two conflicting packages:

  global5: continuing as you have it now
           (perhaps with patches to make it work for recent use cases)

  global6: (with htags support removed)

If you did that, and especially if you changed a config file to include
a note that the global5 package might go away in the next release (so
that most people will see that on upgrade) then you could provoke
the feedback you want, and perhaps also make judgements based on the way
popcon figures shift over time.

Would that work for you?  

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands  [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]  HANDS.COM Ltd.
|-|  http://www.hands.com/    http://ftp.uk.debian.org/
|(|  Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34,   21075 Hamburg,    GERMANY

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