Bug#682347: mark 'editor' virtual package name as obsolete
Russ Allbery dijo [Mon, Dec 25, 2017 at 05:02:01PM -0800]:
> (...)
> I think there are three options, and I'd love to get feedback on which of
> those three options we should take.
>
> 1. Status quo: there is an undocumented editor virtual package, Policy
> says that nothing has to provide or depend on it, and some random
> collection of editors provide it. I think this is a bad place to be,
> so I would hope we can rule out sticking with that status quo.
>
> 2. Document editor and recommend everyone implement it properly. Since
> we're going to allow packages to depend on editor, I think providing it
> would need to be a should, so that's going to be a lot of buggy (but
> not RC-buggy) editor packages. But it would get us to a clean
> dependency system. (I will leave it to someone else to tackle this for
> pager if someone really wants to.)
>
> 3. Mark editor obsolete, leaving only the alternative, and have people
> just use that directly and assume it exists. (My previous patch.)
> (...)
> I have a previous proposed patch in this thread for option 3. For the
> sake of completeness, here's a proposed patch for option 2.
>
> I'd love to have people weigh in on this. I know it's currently the
> holiday season, so I'll probably need to ping this bug again in a week or
> two to get more opinions.
I lean towards version 2. Yes, several packages will be buggy - but,
as you mention, not RC-buggy. It's not *that* many packages. And it's
the correct solution.
Of course, I was not familiar with this bug, and am replying just
after skimming it (trying to follow the most salient details), so this
should just be read as a "leaning towards" and not as an "endorsement"
for the patch in question.
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