Re: auto-removal and alternative dependencies

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Sven Joachim writes ("Re: auto-removal and alternative dependencies"):
> No need to do so, this has been filed[1] quite some time ago already.
...
> 1. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=745475

That's a rather unsatisfying bug report.

I see people arguing about the severity.  I don't think that is really
useful.  What are we going to do, autoremove release.debian.org from
the debian.org dns zone, so that packages don't get removed from the
archive, and we can release ? :-)

A more productive approach would be to offer to help implement the
feature (or fix the bug).  One could start with asking for a pointer
to the appropriate repository.

AFAICT no-one is suggesting that
  Depends: ancient-package | modern-package
is a practical problem which is (or ought to be) forbidden.  (The same
is not true of Build-Depends; and different considerations apply if
the first alternative is non-free.)

Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.