On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 12:01:26AM +0200, Guus Sliepen wrote:
> On Sat, May 21, 2005 at 03:43:24PM -0400, Ove Kaaven wrote:
> > lør, 21,.05.2005 kl. 12.13 -0700, skrev Steve Langasek:
> > > It looks like there are four versions of gmime in testing currently (gmime,
> > > gmime1, gmime2, gmime2.1), only one of which is actually used by any other
> > > packages. Is there any reason not to remove gmime{,1,2} from testing and
> > > unstable?
> > To my knowledge, people using gmime don't generally seem to be making
> > official Debian packages out of their projects. So they may not
> > *actually* be unused, even if no official packages depend on them.
> Exactly. I'm using libgime2.1 for a non-packaged project as well.
> > However, I'm fairly certain that the first one of them (gmime) would be
> > unused, so at least that one can probably safely be removed. But I'm
> > somewhat less certain of gmime1 (which is glib1.2-based) and gmime2
> > (which is glib2.0-based).
> Gmime2 is very stable, there are no problems with its Debian packages. I
> see no reason to remove it from unstable nor testing.
Having four versions of gmime in a stable release means a four-fold increase
in the security team's workload if a security bug is found. (This is true
even if the bug only applies to one version, because the security team still
has to confirm whether the bug is present in each version.) If none but the
current version of gmime is used by things people package, do these packages
really need to be included in a stable release to serve your needs?
I certainly don't think "they *may* not be unused" is a very strong argument
for adding to the number of libraries Debian must support through a stable
release cycle; and packages like this are going to make the difference
between shipping two DVDs vs. three for sarge on architectures like ia64 and
powerpc.
--
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
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