advice requested: requesting an unblock request for bup

[Jon Dowland <jmtd@debian.org>]

Hello,

bup in testing is 0.14a. Version 0.17 introduced some changes to the checksum
algorithm. Anyone with a bup repository created pre 0.17 will have their
backup repository jump in size when they eventually move to 0.17 (or later).
I would like to help people avoid that, especially stable users (i.e., it
seems unfair for a Debian user a year from now to discover bup and be hit
with the increase on upgrade, despite the problem having been solved now).

bup 0.17 and later added a feature 'bup web' which depended on the python
tornado library. Bup embeds a particular copy of that library, but works with
external versions >= 1.0.1.  python-tornado in testing is 0.2, and you have
not granted a freeze exception for 1.0.1-1. (and the python team are likely
to request removal of 0.2 from testing, since nobody should use it!)

Thus, I have the following options

a) leave 0.14a in and let stable users hit the bump when they move to
   wheezy
b) repackage 0.17 with the 'bup web' stuff excised, removing the tornado
   dependency (and web feature)
c) do not include bup in the next stable release of Debian
d) backport the checksum changes to 0.14a

I think c) would be a shame. If I were to do b), the diff would be

 88 files changed, 9452 insertions(+), 989 deletions(-)

Would this be totally unacceptable for an unblock? bear in mind bup is a leaf node,
and new to Debian since lenny.

I'm not sure I can achieve d) (or if I did, how much smaller the diff would
be versus c)), and I'd be concerned about having such a unique version of bup
in Debian vs the rest of the world.


-- 
Jon Dowland