Re: alternatives and priorities

[Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk>]

Wouter Verhelst writes ("alternatives and priorities"):
> Fixing this wasn't very hard, but it made me consider why we let a
> maintainer decide what the alternative priority of an editor would be.

I have a suggestion: how about we make it a rule that to provide a new
alternative with a greater priority than another package (or to adjust
your alternative upwards), you need to get the maintainers of the
`losing' package(s) to agree (ie, the packages whose priority your
alternative now newly exceeds).

If the maintainer(s) disagree, the affected maintainers should discuss
it on debian-devel and the `losing' maintainer should implement the
consensus.  (Obviously the TC can rule if really necessary but I think
what amounts to informal consensus polling seems like the right
approach here.)

Ian.