Bug#878626: ssh-krb5: Remove obsolete transitional package; replace with debconf prompt?
Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> writes:
> I'd like to remove the ssh-krb5 transitional package, since it's been
> around since 2006 and we really shouldn't need to keep transitional
> packages in the archive for over a decade.
> However, this isn't quite just a straightforward transitional package
> with only dependencies: it also has postinst code to enable
> GSSAPIAuthentication and GSSAPIKeyExchange. When we added this
> originally in https://bugs.debian.org/390986, Russ (CCed) said:
>> * openssh-server doesn't enable GSSAPI by default. This is a reasonable
>> default and ideally should be a debconf prompt, but in the interim,
>> installing ssh-krb5 needs to result in a GSSAPI-enabled server. We
>> therefore need a transitional package that will do the right thing in
>> the configuration.
> Russ, do you still think this needs to be a debconf prompt? If so we
> should actually get round to doing it, and it would be less hideously
> ugly now that openssh-server uses ucf.
My concern at the time ssh-krb5 was made a transitional package was that,
if you just installed ssh-krb5, you got an ssh server that did not have
GSS-API enabled. That seemed likely to break things.
Removing the transitional package *entirely* doesn't have the same
problem. People will notice it's an obsolete package, people installing
new systems will discover it doesn't exist, and they'll then have to
install openssh-server, and in that case it makes logical sense that
they'll need to explicitly enable GSS-API.
I think it's fine to just remove the package. It long ago served its
purpose, and the few remaining people who may be using it as a shortcut
will hopefully be able to figure out the right thing to do.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: