Re: please make libkrb53 priority 'standard', since nfs-utils depends on it

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Jeroen" == Jeroen van Wolffelaar <jeroen@wolffelaar.nl> writes:

    Jeroen> On Thu, Mar 10, 2005 at 12:50:35PM -0500, Chip Salzenberg
    Jeroen> wrote:
    >> Package: ftp.debian.org Severity: normal
    >> 
    >> The current unstable nfs-utils (1.0.7-1) builds nfs-common to
    >> depend on libkrb53 for NFSv4 support.  Since nfs-common is
    >> priority 'standard', libkrb53 should also be at least priority
    >> 'standard'.

    Jeroen> I just changed libevent1 and libkrb53 to standard on
    Jeroen> request of Steve Langasek.

I'd like to express my reservations about having nfs-utils depend on
krb5.  Prior to MIT Kerberos 1.4 there is no public interface for
extracting the gss context information nfs-utils needs from a Kerberos
gss context.  AS such, nfs-utils uses internal structures of MIT
Kerberos subject to change without notice.

Especially since I wasn't talked to before this happens I'm going to
have fairly limited sympathy if changes in krb5 break nfs-utils.

There is a public interface added for the benefit of nfs-utils in MIT
Kerberos 1.4.  Unfortunately I'd recommend against taking 1.4 at this
time.  First, it would require a shlib bump.  Second, it's proven to
be a relatively unstable release; 1.4.1 is much better but not out
yet.

In practice this would only be a problem if I needed to backport some
upstream fix to 1.3.x and so it's probably not that big of an issue.
However I think it is generally a good idea to talk to a maintainer
before depending on unpublished internal interfaces of their package
that have been known to change frequently.