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Bug#972896: libgs9-common: please relax the dependency on fonts-urw-base35



Quoting Fabian Greffrath (2020-10-25 21:58:30)
> the fonts-urw-base35 is currently stuck in unstable and not allowed to 
> migrate to testing because the ghostscript package currently suffers 
> from a completely unrelated RC bug. This is because the libgs9-common 
> package has an overly strict dependecy on fonts-urw-base35:
> 
> Depends: fonts-urw-base35 (<< 20170801.1.0~), fonts-urw-base35 (>= 20170801.1)
> 
> Thus, the font package is punished for a bug in ghostscript that's not
> even related to the font at all. Please relax the dependency to just
> the "fonts-urw-base35 (>= 20170801.1)" part so that newer versions of
> the font than the one the ghostscript package was built with are
> allowed to migrate to testing.

It seems to me that the concrete delay is caused by ghostscript in 
_testing_ having tight dependency on the font, and that it therefore 
cannot be solved by an upload to unstable - only by ghostscript 
migrating to testing (or ghostscript getting kicked out of testing).  
That said, relaxing the dependency would avoid similar delays in the 
future.

Regardless of what exactly is fixed when, I am not convinced that it is 
wise to relax the dependency:

The reason for the tight dependency is to ensure the integrity of the 
symlinking between the font package and Ghostscript.  It is resolved by 
dh_linktree which explains it like this in its man page:

> Since symlink trees are created statically at build-time, they are not 
> very future-proof and have a risk to miss some files introduced by a 
> newer version of the package providing the file tree which is 
> duplicated. That's why the generated dependencies generally ensure 
> that the same upstream version be used at run-time than at build-time.


Sorry, I do understand how it is frustrating for the font to be held 
ransom by another package like this.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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