Request for advice: heirloom-mailx / s-nail no longer Provide: mailx

[Hilko Bengen <bengen@debian.org>]

Hi,

with s-nail/14.8.14/3 (2016-12-05), I removed the "Provides: mailx" from
s-nail, the successor of heirloom-mailx, in response to #847049. At the
time I neglected to check for packages that had "heirloom-mailx | mailx"
or "s-nail | mailx" dependencies. This led to the situation that
packages that need a functioning /usr/bin/mail or /usr/bin/mailx now may
no longer get one via the dependency.

I see two ways to handle this for stretch:

(1) File grave bugs against the affected packages. Most patches for
debian/control files should be trivial (replace heirloom-mailx with
bsd-mailx), so I would provide those and possibly offer to NMU.

(2) Add a bsd-mailx dependency to the the heirloom-mailx transitional
package so that a dependency on heirloom-mailx still guarantees that
"proper" /usr/bin/mail and /usr/bin/mailx are present. This would
provide an instant solution but the heirloom-mailx will disappear after
the stretch release and then the affected packages will need to be
changed anyhow.

What should I do?

The affected packages are:

- autopostgresqlbackup (Depends: heirloom-mailx | mailx, Recommends
  heirloom-mailx | biabam | mutt)
- systraq (Depends: bsd-mailx | heirloom-mailx)
- sn (Depends: heirloom-mailx | mailx). Maintained by myself.

- drbd-utils (Recommends: heirloom-mailx | mailx)
- efax-gtk (Recommends: heirloom-mailx)
- rkhunter (Recommends: bsd-mailx | mailutils | heirloom-mailx | mailx)

- aptitude-robot (Suggests: heirloom-mailx | bsd-mailx | mailx)

Cheers,
-Hilko