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Re: Removal of postgis [was: List of remaining libraries for C++ transition]



On Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 10:54:08AM +0100, Giuseppe Sacco wrote:
> Hi Steve,

> Il giorno dom, 27/11/2005 alle 00.06 -0800, Steve Langasek ha scritto:
> [...]
> > The postgis source package has already been removed from testing.  In
> > addition, the existing postgis source package is already libpostgis1; is
> > there a good reason for renaming this source package?

> Upstream release its source as 'postgis'. The maintainer would like to
> provide a package for version 0.9.2 an a package for version 1.0.4.
> He renamed the postgis-0.9.2 in 'postgis0' and postgis-1.0.4 in
> 'postigs1' and now he create many binary packages that keep a '0' or '1'
> in their names.

Yeah, that's not really a good reason to change the source package name.
All it does is add to inconsistency across Debian versions; at least one
ftpmaster (Anthony Towns) has argued that gratuitous source package name
changes, as this one appears to be, are grounds for rejection.

> I proposed to only change the name of 0.9.2 and keep 1.0.4 as postigs,
> but the maintainer will was different. No special reason, i think. I am
> putting him in bcc so he may provide more information.

Ok.

> > I guess the binary package has changed names from libpostgis1-pg74 to
> > libpostgis1-pg7.4, and this covers us for the C++ ABI transition?

> The binary package keep the same name since it already included the '1'.
> The library name is liblwgeom.so.1 for 1.0.4 (no change) and
> libpostgis.so.0 for 0.9.2 (new library).

- this is not the same binary package name.  One is pg74, the other is
  pg7.4.
- the '1' has *nothing* to do with this thread, which is about dealing with
  the g++ ABI change.
- the libpostgis1-pg74 package is either a badly-structured (and badly
  named) shared library package, or it's a badly-structured plugin package.
  I can't tell which very easily, because the packaging is sufficiently
  wrong.  If this is a shared library package, the library should be in
  /usr/lib instead of /usr/lib/postgresql/lib/, there is a missing -dev
  package, and the package ought to be named liblwgeom1.  If it's a plugin
  package, the use of an soname and shlibs is superfluous and misleading.
  And also would mean that no package rename is required.

> There is probably no change for a real transition since the old package
> had FTBFS bugs and hence it wasn't used that much. Some user where
> subscribed to pkg-grass@alioth and already tested the new package and
> developed an upgrade path.

That's not really an acceptable rationale for not handling an ABI
transition.  If the package *exists*, the only reasonable assumption is that
it has users; and those users deserve smooth transitions, because smooth
transitions are part of what *makes* Debian an attractive system for users.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/

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