On Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 10:41:17PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote: > I am working on taking over the bibtool package, QA-orphaned last > week. I find to my surprise that the source package builds not only a > 'bibtool' package, but also 'bibtool-dev' which contains a static > library. > I question the utility of the bibtool-dev package: > - No packages depend or build-depend on it (no recommends or suggests > either). > - It has only 4 popcon votes for it. > - The library simply consists of every source file for the bibtool > binary, except main.c > - It does not appear to be designed with reusable abstractions in mind. > - Most symbols that are exported from one .o in the library are used > by another. Theses include "db_find", "error", "init_entries", > "get_item", "seen", "show_version", "add_word", "new_string", > "sbputc", "lower". No namespace conservation effort is apparent. > Including this in any larger piece of software would be a tiptoeing > business. > I am tempted to decide that bibtool-dev is just a waste of mirror > space and Packages.gz bandwidth. On the other hand, it might be > considered unethical to adopt a package only to kill off one of its > .debs. Not at all unethical; I for one greatly appreciate it if packages get this kind of attention from new maintainers. Anyway, you certainly don't owe it to the previous maintainer to keep packages around that you believe were mistakes. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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