Am 15.04.2012 00:24, schrieb Bill Allombert:
It would certainly be useful to know why it was added in the first place. The relevant bug reports are #64004, #64006 and #295006.
I've read through them.I don't see the point of #64004. It sounds like the OP wanted to suggest adding it as some kind of preparation should lame ever get included in Debian. Well, now it is and it does *not* provide this virtual package. Packages supporting /u/b/lame (i.e. the CLI) should declare a Depends on lame instead - it's that simple.
#64006 and #295006 tell a similar story, but I believe the latter one is more significant. I wholeheartly agree with the reasons you give for the reject, being that a virtual package "audio-encoder" does not add value as long as all the candidates provide different interfaces. If you support /u/b/flac to encode audio to FLAC, declare a Depends on the flac package; if you support /u/b/oggenc to encode to OGG/Vorbis, declare a Depends on the vorbis-tools package.
As long as it is not possible to run "audio-encoder some_audio.wav" on Debian to convert some_audio.wav into the next best audio format, this virtual package makes no sense. This is especially true for "mp3-encoder" and the exact reason why it should get removed IMHO.
- Fabian