Bug#199311: debian-policy: notify maintainers before removing dependencies from distrib

[Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

On Sun, Jun 29, 2003 at 05:39:25PM -0700, Mark Hedges wrote:
> Package: debian-policy
> Version: unavailable; reported 2003-06-29
> Severity: grave
> Justification: renders package unusable
> 
> 
> Shouldn't there be a policy to check for packages that
> depend on a package BEFORE its removal from the distribution,
> and to notify maintainers ahead of time that their packages
> will break?  Such was the case with the disappearance of
> perlapi-5.6.1 in the process of upgrading to perl 5.8.0.
> A bunch of packages broke and refuse to install.  It seems
> like that could have been avoided by notifying the maintainers
> ahead of time that a dependency of their packages was going
> to disappear, and to give them some time to write fixes.

No, it would not work, unless policy mandate developers to read
their emails. For example:

<http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2002/debian-devel-announce-200207/msg00014.html>
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-perl-0209/msg00012.html>

... and grep for Perl in the DWN.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.