[pkg-lynx-maint] switching contents of lynx and lynx-cur (was: git migration)

[Axel Beckert]

Hi Andreas,

Andreas Metzler wrote:
> Some thoughts about moving the content to lynx:
> - The argument about the end-user having difficulties finding and
>   installing lynx seems weak to me. apt(-get) install lynx works
>   perfectly fine. Imho the only strong argument for a transition is
>   that the situation afterwards would be more aesthetically
>   pleasing.

Yeah, it's indeed some kind of pedantry:

* I generally dislike having transitional packages for more than one
  stable release. They're obsolete afterwards.

* If they're not considered obsolete after one stable release, they're
  not really transitional packages and shouldn't be declared as such.

A nice example for such a transitional-ish looking but
non-transitional package is IMHO "ash" due to the contained symlink.

Then again there are also transitional packages with such a symlink
which I will remove after Jessie nevertheless: zsh-beta for example.

> - The thing is not completely trivial, since it involves moving of
>   a dpkg conffile which requires some effort to avoid unnecessary dpkg
>   conffile prompts. (Which would be an rc bug.)

>From my PoV it's a simple dpkg-maintscript-helper via debhelper.

> - We would need to ship a lynx-cur metapackage up until and including
>   Stretch.

Yes, that's the plan. _Only_ for Stretch, and kill it between Stretch
and Buster.

> So I /personally/ would not rename the package. Or to rephrase: The
> small ugliness could not motivate *me* to invest the necessary
> amount of work.

The point for me is: It's not a _small_ ugliness to me but a bigger
one which bothers me for quite some stable releases.

So yeah, I'd definitely invest that time to polish up this package.
:-)

> However I can understand that you are offended more strongly by the
> current situation. ;-)

Appreciated. :-)

> If that is true I would suggest to go the whole nine yards and also
> move to the lynx source package name.

I wouldn't:

* I care _way_ more about the binary names (where end-users have
  contact) than about the source package names (where nearly only
  developers have contact).

* If someone wants to bring back lynx stable releases to Debian, it's
  a simple binary rename game again and lynx-cur won't need to have to
  change the source name again (and go through the NEW queue again).

  I though don't expect this to happen soon.

* Renaming the source packages involves the NEW queue. I'd like to
  avoid that detour if possible.

* Exchanging the contents of our current two binary packages does not
  involve the NEW queue at all, because the transitional package has
  been kept for ages. (So yes, I see the never removed transitional
  packages as an advantage for my plan. :-)

		Regards, Axel
-- 
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