Bug#668394: debian-policy: Spurious virtual packages "mp3-encoder"/"mp3-decoder"

[Fabian Greffrath <fabian@greffrath.com>]

Package: debian-policy
Severity: minor

Hello,

I just stumbled upon the official list [1] of virtual packages in Debian and
was surprised by the presence of one called "mp3-encoder". This virtual package
seems to be provided by only one real package, "opencubicplayer", and I doubt
that this is actually a real mp3-encoder. On the other hand, the only
mp3-encoder that we actually have in Debian since a long time is "lame" and
this package does not even provide the virtual "mp3-encoder" package.

So there is something wrong either way. Since this seems not to have attracted
anyone's attention before, I suggest to simply remove the virtual package
"mp3-encoders" from this list. Packages should probably better directly depend
on "lame" instead.

The virtual package "mp3-decoder" should also be re-considered. While it is
already provided by a handful of packages (mpg123, mpg321, vlc[-nox] and said
opencubicplayer), it is obviously ignored by the majority of media players in
Debian and noone seems to object.

Cheers,
Fabian

[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.txt



-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (901, 'testing'), (501, 'unstable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-686-pae (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.utf8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash