[Debian-astro-maintainers] fitsverify now included in cfitsio: which version to use?

[Sergio Gelato]

According to the upstream change log fitsverify was first included in CFITSIO 4.4.0. Release 4.5.0 includes a bug fix to fitsverify, which is presumably not in the latest standalone release (4.22, which predates CFITSIO 4.4.0). At the very least this suggests that the old fitsverify source package should be dropped in favour of cfitsio. The question is then whether to continue with a separate binary package.

popcon data suggest that cfitsio-bin has about 10 times more installations than fitsverify. Both packages are small (amd64: 120kB for standalone fitsverify, 351kB for cfitsio 4.5.0-3 including fitsverify); I don't see any strong case for keeping them separate now that they are built from the same source.
________________________________________
From: Aurelien Jarno <aurel32 at debian.org>
Sent: Sunday, 13 October 2024 22:34
To: debian-astro at lists.debian.org; debian-astro-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org
Subject: fitsverify now included in cfitsio: which version to use?

Dear all,

Starting with version 4.5.0, cfitsio now includes the fitsverify binary.
I have added it to the libcfitsio-bin package along with the other
tools. When receiving bug #1085050, I realized that it was already
packaged as a standalone tool.

Now there are two options:
- stop shipping it from libcfitsio-bin
- add a Conflicts + Provides: fitsverify to libcfitsio-bin and ask for
  removal of the fitsverify package from the archive. We might
  optionally add a transitional package to smooth the upgrade.

Any opinions?

Regards
Aurelien

--
Aurelien Jarno                          GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B
aurelien at aurel32.net                     http://aurel32.net