Re: libraries being removed from the archive
On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 03:55:41PM -0400, David Z Maze wrote:
> Chris Cheney <ccheney@cheney.cx> writes:
>
> > IMHO we need to make an addition to policy stating that an old lib can
> > not be removed from the archive until no other packages still depend on
> > it.
>
> So say I maintain foo. The source package produces two binary
> packages, foo and libfoo1. Now, there's a new foo release, that
> changes libfoo's soname. In the current scheme, I package the new
> upstream release and upload foo and libfoo2; since there's no source
> package for libfoo1, it eventually gets removed from unstable.
>
> Are you proposing that (a) the ftpmasters not remove libfoo1, or (b)
> that package maintainers of library packages are now compelled to
> package the last version of foo's source providing libfoo1 separately,
> potentially for multiple release cycles for a widely used library?
> Option (b) sounds problematic to me...
libfoo1 gets automatically removed immediately upon installation of
libfoo2 in the archive currently. The proper way to fix this issue
is when the maintainer uploads new libfoo source with libfoo2 package
in it to also upload a source called libfoo1 that only provides the
libfoo1 binary package [0]. I have done this myself for libao0 in the
past. Once libfoo1 is no longer used by anything you can simply remove
it from the archive without having to modify anything. I seriously
doubt at the speed of Debian's "release cycle" you would need to have
the old library in the archive for more than one release, probably not
even that long. You do realize that Debian's "release cycle" is
currently 2 years per release...?
Chris Cheney
[0] Both the libfoo and libfoo1 source will be marked NEW so assuming
that both get processed at the same time packages depending on libfoo1
won't become uninstallable.
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