Re: Renaming a package

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, Peter S Galbraith wrote:

> Peter S Galbraith <p.galbraith@globetrotter.net> wrote:
>
> > Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es> wrote:
> >
> > > There is not a "standard" to make a package to disappear, but there is
> > > something you can do to ensure that "apt-get upgrade" works: Just make
> > > emacs-goodies-extra-el a dummy (empty) package which depends on
> > > emacs-goodies-el, and make debbugs-el a dummy package which depends on
> > > debian-el. Make them of extra priority and section oldlibs. Remove the
> > > conflicts, so that these packages are actually installed.
> >
> > I'm very glad I asked on this list.  Many thanks!
> > (makes me wonder if I should kill the extra package, considering it will
> > live on anyway)
>
> Are we allowed to kill dummy packages after one stable release?
> If it were created now, I could simply remove it after sarge's release?

I think we should keep them by at least two stable releases, so that
upgrades which skip exactly one stable release (for example, from
potato to sarge) still work.

After all, nobody could say that dummy packages take a lot of disk
space in ftp-master or are difficult to maintain :-)