Re: Virtual "fizmo" package

[Christoph Ender <christoph.ender@spellbreaker.org>]

Am 08.02.2014 um 20:03 schrieb Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com>:
> On Vi, 07 feb 14, 19:22:06, Christoph Ender wrote:
>> 
>> I’m currently thinking about creating a virtual package for "fizmo". [...]
>> I'd like to drop the transitional "fizmo" package for the jessie release
>> and provide a virtual package of the same name instead. [...]
> 
> I don't think this is very nice to users who would do
> 'apt-get install fizmo': 
> 
> root@sid:~# LANG=C apt-get install mailx
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree       
> Reading state information... Done
> Package mailx is a virtual package provided by:
>  mailutils 1:2.99.98-1.1
>  heirloom-mailx 12.5-2
>  bsd-mailx 8.1.2-0.20131005cvs-1
> You should explicitly select one to install.
> 
> E: Package 'mailx' has no installation candidate
> root@sid:~# apt-get install bsd-mailx
> ...
> root@sid:~# LANG=C apt-get purge mailx
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree       
> Reading state information... Done
> Virtual packages like 'mailx' can't be removed
> 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 28 not upgraded.
> 
> Do you expect any issues to having a dummy package fizmo to pull 
> whatever implementation you consider to be the most likely to be wanted 
> by users?


For the current setup – ncursesw vs. stdout/console – this would be
simple: In most cases, fizmo-ncursesw is the best choice. In case
fizmo-sdl is released at some time, things wouldn't be so easy anymore.

From a personal point of view, I've always seen the list of implementations
providing a package request as a rather positive thing. The capability to
get a plain "fizmo" link to the selected implementation via alternatives
also appears as something good to me.

These are, as said, personal views. There aren't any strong reasons to go
either the one or the other way: The original intent was to remove the
transitional oldlibs fizmo package which was made to allow for a clean
wheezy upgrade from squeeze and wouldn't be required for jessie anymore.


Regards,
Christoph.