[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#817939: RM: fw4spl -- RoQA; RC buggy, NPOASR, depends on to-be-removed package

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2016 19:13:21 +0100 Andreas Tille wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 07:14:09PM +0000, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 08:55:42PM +0200, Esa Peuha wrote:
> > > Package: ftp.debian.org
> > > 
> > > fw4spl has had only three upload to Debian: the first two a few
> > > days apart in March 2015, the third in July.
> > 
> > the fact that a package had the last maintainer upload so "recently"
> > tell me that it should be good to wait.  though here the maintainer
> > seems to have disappeared, indeed.
> > 
> > Please try to at least CC the maintainer when you file a RoQA for the
> > removal of the full source package, adding $pkg at pacakges.debian.org to
> > X-Debbugs-CC is more than enough.
> 
> I would like to stress the fact that the Debian Med team would like to
> keep this package inside Debian.  The package and its dependencies are
> complex.  The intention is to switch to insighttoolkit4 so it will not
> really block the removal of insighttoolkit (version 3).
> 
> Thanks for your patience
> 
>     Andreas.
> 
> PS: Corentin, it would be good if you would be able to give some rough
>     estimation of the time needed.

Please reconsider your desire to keep this package inside Debian.
Keeping the package in unstable in its currently shape is hindering
various other packages in its dependency chain. See #820632 for example.

This package is keeping libvtk5.8 in unstable, and that keeps the old
netcdf packages around which hinder testing migration of every new
package revision since two transitions ago (back in October 2015).

fw4spl is likewise keeping the gdcm (2.4.4-4) packages in unstable,
which have long since been superseded by the 2.6 series. These also keep
libvtk5.8 in unstable.

This package should be removed from the Debian archive until a new
release supporting the current versions of the dependencies can
reintroduce the package in Debian.

It's sad to see that the other reverse dependencies that are keeping
libvtk5.8 in Debian unstable are all maintained by the Debian Med Team.
The VTK situation in Debian has been highly annoying for far too long
already, we should not have to endure that any longer. We should get rid
of all the badly maintained packages that are prolonging the pain.

Kind Regards,

Bas

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