Re: debian/NEWS.Debian / apt-listchanges woes

[Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>]

Hi Jeroen,

On 12 March 2005 at 18:09, Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
| On Sat, Mar 12, 2005 at 10:45:00AM -0600, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
| > The next version of R [1] ships with the previously included Gnome front-end.
| 
| without, I assume.

Yup. Thanks for spotting that from context.

| > So the r-gnome binary package becomes an empty shell, and I would like to
| > signal that via a NEWS file (as opposed to a debconf message).  However, in
| > my tests, the NEWS file never got displayed by apt-listchanges.
| 
| Why do you still include that package then? If that package stops
| existing, you shouldn't build it anymore IMHO. Having an empty package

There is no "build". The source package r-base creates eleven binary
packages. Of these eleven, one will go away. 

So "building" this one is essentially costless in the context of the
otherwise moderately costly (~25 minutes in my pbuilder with all the
build-depends taking maybe 5 minutes to configure) build.

By keeping the package for now, I get an opportunity to show the NEWS.Debian
file, and tell folks _who had r-gnome installed_ that theu could get the
sources from svn. The good thing is that I don't bother the majority of R
users who didn't install this additional UI at all.

| only has use if it's a transition package depending on the renamed
| package. Since this isn't what r-gnome will be as far as I understand
| you, you should simply stop building r-gnome from r-base. People
| upgrading will notice r-gnome will be uninstalled (if dependencies force
| that) 

Is that what will happen?  I tend to force tight Depends on the same
version. So we'd upgrade from

  2.0.1-4 for r-base-core and r-gnome

to, say, at release time of R 2.1.0

  2.1.0-1 for r-base-core with no r-gnome.

Wouldn't that block r-base because no suitable r-gnome is found for it?

| or that it is obsolete (otherwise, if they use a proper frontend
| like aptitude). It'd otherwise also be a bit of a bummer if someone
| installs r-gnome, only to discover it's an empty package.

I intend to withdraw r-gnome at the next round (i.e. R 2.2.0 in October) with
the usual conficts/replaces (and provides if I need it, I think I don't).

Thanks, Dirk

-- 
Better to have an approximate answer to the right question than a precise 
answer to the wrong question.  --  John Tukey as quoted by John Chambers