Re: Bug#754462: Bug#862051: nodejs (6.11.2~dfsg-1) experimental; urgency=medium
Jérémy Lal writes ("Re: Bug#754462: Bug#862051: nodejs (6.11.2~dfsg-1) experimental; urgency=medium"):
> So, a short NEWS entry explaining /usr/bin/node is now available by default,
> and that /usr/bin/nodejs will stay available indefinitely ?
> Or even nothing and just a changelog entry ?
I would go for the latter, personally.
My philosophy is that a NEWS entry is something you use when people
have to change something. The best packages do not need NEWS entries
because they simply keep working. Starting to provide /usr/bin/node
and keeping /usr/bin/nodejs means that no-one has to change anything,
which is perfect - and therefore we don't need to bother users.
It's true that NEWS might be used when a new opportunity arises that
means many users might want to change something, even though they
don't have to. I would reserve that for situations where the user's
existing setup is (likely to be) hazardous or seriously suboptimal,
especially in a non-obvious way.
Existing scripts that use /usr/bin/nodejs are not as portable to other
OSes as they could be, but of course the script's author will probably
be aware of that already. It doesn't seem to me to be the kind of
opportunity for remedying a significant defect that would warrant a
NEWS entry.
However:
One thing you I would consider is that it would be nice if scripts in
Debian packages were made more portable to other distros. So Debian
packages should gradually change to use /usr/bin/node. I am very
conservative about these things because I like to keep backporting
(within Debian) as easy as possible. So if I were the maintainer of a
node.js package which had scripts mentioning /usr/bin/nodejs, I would
probably make that change in buster+1 rather than in buster.
In buster+1 you should probably consider asking for a lintian warning
about references to /usr/bin/nodejs. Not because you intend to drop
/usr/bin/nodejs ever (why do that - see previous emails) but because
it would be better, as I've just discussed, for Debian packages to
contain fewer hurdles to adoption elsewhere.
Regards,
Ian.
--
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own.
If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.
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