What happened to libmagick(++)5.5.7?

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Hello.

I'm trying to solve bug #245603, which says that autotrace is not
currently installable in sid because libmagick5.5.7 and
libmagick++5.5.7, which it links to, have been removed.

Since somewhen in 2003 we've had libmagick5.5.7 and libmagick++5.5.7.
Then this week the following was uploaded in rapid succession:

 last Sunday: imagemagick 6.0.0.2-1, building libmagick(++)6.0.1
    Thursday: imagemagick 6.0.0.2-2, building libmagick(++)6

Now, as far as pacakges.d.o tells me, sid contains libmagick(++)6.0.1
and libmagick(++)6 but not libmagick(++)5.5.7

I cannot currently build build a new autotrace against libmagick6,
because it conflicts with libmagick6.0.1, which the current
libpstoedit0 depends on. Well, that is just a matter of waiting for
pstoedit to be built against the new libmagick packages, and I have
filed a bug asking for that.

However, I still find it strange that libmagick5.5.7 disappeared
from sid immediately while libmagick6.0.1 still survives after the
source package changed to building libmagick6.

Is there perhaps a rule that says that binary packages that have been
dropped by their source package survive until the next time the source
package changes its set of binary packages? If so, would it be
possible to resurrect libmagick(++)5.5.7 in sid - four days is a
rather short timeframe in which to recompile everything that depended
on the older package.

-- 
Henning Makholm       "It was intended to compile from some approximation to
                 the M-notation, but the M-notation was never fully defined,
                because representing LISP functions by LISP lists became the
 dominant programming language when the interpreter later became available."