Re: RFC: dropping Ruby-Versions fields

[Lucas Kanashiro <kanashiro@debian.org>]

HI,

Em 20/08/2022 13:45, Antonio Terceiro escreveu:
> Hello,
>
> Today, we have XS-Ruby-Versions and XB-Ruby-Versions: fields in our
> source packages. There are two fields:
>
> - XS-Ruby-Versions is required by gem2deb to even build the package, and
>   is supposed to indicate which Ruby versions the package _should_ be
>   built for. For native (arch: any) packages, this influences for which
>   Ruby versions C extensions are even attempted to be built for. For all
>   packages, this also indicates which versions the package should be
>   tested against.
>
> - XB-Ruby-Versions is optional, and is usually filled by the expansion
>   of ${ruby:Versions}. This indicates which versions the package was
>   built and tested for. This could in principle be used during Ruby
>   transitions to known which ones need to be rebuilt, but in practice we
>   use the packages dependencies for that.
>
> Given that 1) we don't really support packages not working with all
> available Ruby versions, 2) multiple ruby versions are only present
> simultaneously during transitions, and 3) we only release with a single
> version, I propose that we drop these entirely, and always build and
> test for all supported Ruby versions. We would then consider packages
> that don't work with all versions to be buggy.
>
> So I ask: is anyone using this Ruby-Versions mechanism to do something
> valuable, and would miss if we just drop it?

I have not seen any package making use of that, always set to the
default. Moreover, IIRC there is some lintian warning about those fields
which sometimes confuses new contributors. In short, +1 to removing that
field.

-- 
Lucas Kanashiro