Splitting source package; what to do with NEWS files?

["Kevin B. McCarty" <kmccarty@Princeton.EDU>]

Hi all,

I am intending to split the source package for "cernlib" into four new
source packages (one of which will still be called cernlib) for the
purposes of better maintainability, and making life easier on slow
buildds.  I have questions about what to do with NEWS files though.

Let me give a simplified example to describe the questions:

Source package foo, version 1-1, generates binary packages foo-bin and
bar-bin.   It has a file debian/NEWS that describes important changes
made to the bar source code between upstream versions 0 and 1.  The file
looks like this:

foo (1-1) unstable; urgency=low

    Important options of the "bar" program changed between versions
    0 and 1; they are not backward-compatible.  See upstream's
    changelog for more info.

 -- Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@debian.org>  [date]

Later, foo is split up into source packages foo (version 2-1) that
generates binary package foo-bin; and bar (version 2-1) that generates
binary package bar-bin.

What should I do with the NEWS file?  Should it stay in the foo source
package (even though it is about bar)?  Should it instead move into the
bar source package (even though the title of the NEWS entry is "foo")?
Should I move it into the bar source package and rewrite history by
changing "foo" to "bar" in the first line of the NEWS file, even though
there was never a bar 1-1 source package?  And will apt-listchanges do
the Right Thing during upgrades in any of these cases?

(In the case of cernlib, the package names in question are actually
foo = cernlib, bar = geant321, and the NEWS entry in question is for
cernlib version 2005.05.09.dfsg-1.  As an added complication, a nearly
identical NEWS entry exists for the version 2004.11.04.dfsg-0sarge1 that
was pushed into stable/updates to fix a licensing problem, and is now in
Sarge.)

Thanks in advance for your opinions.

-- 
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu>   Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/    Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751                 Princeton, NJ 08544