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Bug#881339: marked as done (allow node-babel-preset-env to build depend on itself)



On 2018-02-22 11:59 +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Margarita Manterola <marga@debian.org>:
> > Thus, we are closing this bug now, as it's not actionable.
> > 
> > We suggest that you work together with the FTP Masters in
> > figuring out a solution to this problem.
> 
> I'm not sure I agree with this.

Me neither. (I mean maybe it's true that the TC cannot overrule the
FTPmasters, but they can provide technically sensible advice).

I don't see any difference between this js package and many other
packages in the archive which self-bootstrap or otherwise circularly
depend on themselves. So I don't see why this one is not acceptable,
and thus so far as I can tell the FTP master was wrong to reject it,
or at the very least we should be discussing this issue in terms of
policy.

It seems to me that a discussion on debian-devel would have been
sensible before asking the TC to rule, but as they haven't, it's still
sensible. We have plenty of expertise about circular dependencies,
especially amongst those involved with cross-building and
bootstrapping, where they are more obvious than in normal practice.

We could clearly do a better job of formalising meta-data or
mechanisms for software that has this characteristic, and we can try
to persuade upstreams to do less of it where possible, but
self-dependency (at both same and older versions) also occurs more
frequently when cross-building or bootstrapping and is not necessarily
wrong or bad (self-dependency at the same version is much more of a
problem than self-dependency at older versions).

Anyway, Pirate - I suggest you ask about this on debian-devel where we
can have a pulic discussion about policy and whether there is anything
special about this case which makes it not suitable software for the
archive.

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/

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