[Pkg-rust-maintainers] Bug#969839: rust-failure: Should rust-failure be removed from unstable?

[Salvatore Bonaccorso]

Hi Peter,

On Mon, Nov 09, 2020 at 12:07:16AM +0000, peter green wrote:
> reassign 973298 rust-failure
> retitle 973298 rust-failure: Should rust-failure be removed from unstable?
> thanks
> 
> > As there was no objection (although admittely 2 weeks might be short),
> > but the upstream is officially end-of-life. So just reassigned the
> > bug to ftp.d.o for removal.
> 
> I've just spotted this bug report.
> 
> The reverse dependency checking in dak rm does not work
> for rust packages due to the way they use virtual packages.
> 
> To check for references to packages from rust-failure in other packages I used
> zcat /srv/ftp.debian.org/mirror/dists/sid/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz | grep-dctrl rust-failure -sPackage
> On mirror.ftp-master.debian.org
> 
> and
> 
> zcat /srv/ftp.debian.org/mirror/dists/sid/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz | grep-dctrl rust-failure -sPackage
> 
> then manually dug into the results the results, remoed false grouped things by source
> package followed the reverse dependency tree etc.
> 
>   rust-assert-cli: hard dependency, no apparent reverse depends, package not in testing
>   rust-cargo-lichking: package is already rc buggy and not in testing, no apperent reverse depends
>   rust-cpal: hard dependency
>     qwertone: Package is already rc buggy and not in testing.
>   rust-mdl: hard dependency, no apparent reverse depends.
>   rust-rspotify: hard dependency
>     rust-spotify-tui: package not in testing
>   rust-spotify-tui: covered above
>   rust-html2pango: hard dependency, no apparent reverse depends.
>   rust-include-dir-impl: hard dependency, no apparent reverse depends.
>   rust-mdl: hard dependency, no apparent reverse depends.
>   rust-sloppy-rfc4880: hard dependency, no apparent reverse depends.
>   rust-sniffglue: hard dependency, package not in testing, no apparent reverse depends, libary and application package
>   rust-tokio-process: hard dependency
>     rust-jobserver: autopkgtest dependecy only, can probablly be ignored, rdeps not investigated
>   rust-trust-dns-proto: hard dependency, no apparent rdeps
>   rust-vergen: hard dependency, no apparent rdeps
>   rust-tui: autopkgtest dependecy only, can probablly be ignored, not in testing, rdeps not investigated
>   rust-which: not needed by the "no features" configuration, but needed for the "failure" "use_failure" and "default" featuresets, no apparent reverse depends for effected feature but important rdepends for other features.
> 
> In addition to the reverse dependencies there are also embedded copies of the failure crate in firefox-esr
> and thunderbird.
> 
> I think that is enough of a pile of rdeps that this package should not be removed at this time.

So you are right, thanks for spotting my mistake, which is because I
indeed only check if dak rm would cause any issues. I agree that we
thus likely cannot remove it for now from unstable.

Regards,
Salvatore