Re: DEP 17: Improve support for directory aliasing in dpkg
Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org> writes:
> So why do we allow changes that require listing all reverse dependencies
> in Breaks then? This is known to be wrong for all non- listed packages,
> e.g., all local/vendor/derivative-specific packages.
Because it's a balance; we don't want to stop making changes, and never
making a backward-compatible change doesn't work, so we do the best we can
with the tools we have. However, if someone with an out-of-Debian package
tells us that a change breaks it, historically we did add them to Breaks.
We just don't have a good way of discovering this.
> As far as I understand, we do explicitly *not* care about our
> derivatives with regard to merged-/usr as some packages in Debian
> recommend users to move *away* from merged-/usr to split-/usr on
> derivatives, i.e., to an unsupported fs layout.
Caring about them isn't the same thing as doing everything they want. We
can both try to make things as smooth for them as possible and still make
design decisions about Debian that they may disagree with or that may make
some property they want to maintain difficult or impossible. It's the
sort of decision we have to make on a case-by-case basis.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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