Hi, Thanks for your input! On 13-03-12 13:49, Andreas Henriksson wrote:
You could ofcourse package anything you wish, but including it in Debian is another question for me. Including it in Debian means you are prepared to maintain it in the long run. Several years to come. I'd avoid introducing lots of programs that depend on the libnfc API which you'll later need to port over to a new API and/or provide a migration path for users to new tools that has been developed for the new stack. You're ofcourse welcome to disagree.
That is only true assuming that libnfc will eventually completely disappear. Especially given the response from upstream (see Thomas' mail), I doubt that will happen. libnfc has some more features which probably won't ever make it to the kernel (mfoc has already been mentioned). There is also the possibility of writing a libnfc driver that uses the kernel module, so that they can exist (and be used) together.
Even if it will be completely replaced by the NFC subsystem, I think the benefits of having a complete NFC stack in wheezy outweighs the drawback of having a migration later on. Packages have been removed and superseded since the earliest Debian releases, and when there is a (better) alternative available, that shouldn't cause much problems.
Cheers, Oxan van Leeuwen