Bug#682347: mark 'editor' virtual package name as obsolete
Paride Legovini <pl@ninthfloor.org> writes:
> On Fri, 25 Aug 2017 10:09:34 +0200 Jeroen Dekkers <jeroen@dekkers.ch> wrote:
>> Nano is priority important which means it will be installed by default
>> and someone who explicitly uninstalls nano will probably also install
>> another editor. I doubt a dependency on editor will make any difference
>> in practice.
> I agree, I see no advantage in adding a default-editor: if we have to
> add complexity then it's better to just keep the virtual package.
On the technical front, I think keeping the editor virtual package as it's
currently (occasionally) used is not really viable, because it doesn't
have well-defined behavior. Depending directly on a virtual package that
provides as wildly varying functionality as editor does results in
essentially random experience for users if the dependency is ever used.
We had a long discussion about this over MTAs, and I think if we want to
keep the editor virtual package structure, we would need to add
default-editor just so that we can get reliable and predictable behavior,
similar to what we did with default-mta. We could, of course, do that;
the question is whether it's worth it.
Of course, dropping the virtual package also gives us predictable
behavior, just in a different way, and with a risk that editor won't exist
on minimal installations that don't include important packages. (My patch
assumes that we're okay with that risk, given how editors are normally
used.)
> I maintain 'vis', which Provides 'editor', and I prepared a new version
> where this is not done anymore, but I still have to publish it. Is this
> issue to be considered as settled? I see that 'nano' already dropped its
> Provides line, so I guess it is.
Ideally I'd like myon to feel comfortable with this proposed outcome, and
the proposed wording hasn't gotten enough seconds yet.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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