Re: Bug#735134: perl: rename(1) is ancient
On Sun, Feb 02, 2014 at 03:57:00PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Stuart Prescott <stuart@debian.org> writes:
>
> >> 2) Make libfile-rename-perl be Standard, to match perl, without adding
> >> any dependencies.
>
> > So to pursue option 2 and take prename outside the build-essential set,
> > either some checking and bug filing needs to be done, or follow the lintian
> > strategy and add a test for use of rename/prename in d/rules and lintian is
> > both the prod to encourage change and metric of progress.
Unless we change the migration strategy to not rely on alternatives,
some of those packages will have to change anyway (since we wouldn't
continue to provide prename).
Codesearch results look like very roughly 100 packages effected -
and 30 using prename.
> We could also just add the new package to build-essential. It would look
> a little odd, but "it's always been part of build-essential" is a pretty
> good reason to leave it there, and it's a fairly small package.
Policy says:
"It is not necessary to explicitly specify build-time relationships on
a minimal set of packages that are always needed to compile, link and put
in a Debian package a standard "Hello World!" program written in C or C++.
The required packages are called build-essential, and an informational
list can be found in /usr/share/doc/build-essential/list (which is
contained in the build-essential package).[13]"
So rename sounds quite a long way than away from that.
Adding perl and rename to build-essential would save touching about
60 source packages if the above analysis is correct. Not sure if that
is enough to justify such a change to policy?
Dominic.
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