Re: Claiming a binary name used in Sarge but not in Etch.
On Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 12:32:29PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> Dear mentors,
>
> When I created the package amap-align (bioinformatics), there was a
> already a program called "amap" in Debian. Therefore, I renamed the
> binary program of my package. However, the old amap package has been
> removed from Etch, so I would like to know if it is possible to provide
> our users the bioinformatical program "amap" under its real name, and
> not "amap-align" as it is the case for the moment.
Also removed from unstable: "RoM; non-free". So it seems unlikely to
return (that's important).
http://ftp-master.debian.org / removals
> What is the policy of Debian for pacakges which are not released
> anymore? Can I Conflict:amap with my package amap-align, and request the
> upgraded package to be hinted in Etch ? Importantly, there is little
> overlap between the field of usage of amap and amap-align, so I think
> that the conflict is unikely to happen in real life. (can popcon be
> mined for this kind of data ?).
The popcon interface can't, but if you mail the popcon group, they might
be willing to check for hosts with both installed, and of those with
recent access times.
> Also, I think that I should inform users that the name has changed, can
> I use NEWS for this ? Lastly, do I have to support the old
> /usr/bin/amap-align for some moment, as it was never released in a
> stable distribution ? For instance, I can provide a wrapper which issues
> a warning.
>
> http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/amap.html
> http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/amap-align.html
A NEWS entry isn't unreasonable. Supporting the old binary might be
nice; a wrapper with a warning rather than a symlink is extra friendly.
Be sure to use "exec" as the last line of a wrapper script to remove
unnecessary memory footprint.
Cheers
Justin
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