[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#897605: How to deal with non-functional package in stretch? (Was: Bug#897605: profphd failure in stretch)

[Andreas Tille]

Hi release team,

it turned out that profphd is non-functional in stretch (see bug
#897605).  Since its not obviously a security issue we are wondering
whether there is some way to integrate this admittedly low popcon
package into Debian 9.5 (whenever this might be released).

While we can certainly do a backport not all users will realise / profit
from this.

On Fri, May 04, 2018 at 04:01:48AM +0000, olivier sallou wrote:
> Le jeu. 3 mai 2018 21:55, Andreas Tille <andreas at an3as.eu> a écrit :
> 
> > On Thu, May 03, 2018 at 02:58:58PM +0000, olivier sallou wrote:
> > >
> > > newer version in sid (1.0.42-2) added a patch to allow new perl release.
> > A
> > > quick test on sid works (at least no error, just calling program with no
> > > argument), so maybe backporting this release would do the job
> >
> > Ahhh, right - I remember that Tatiana had to do some heavy patching.
> >
> > > > We definitely need some CI test for this package obviously.
> >
> > That was also done by Tatiana.
> >
> > However, a backport does not really close a bug in stretch and the issue
> > is also not really a security issue, right?
> >
> 
> This is indeed not a security issue, but package is unusable. Backport
> would at least make software available.
> I don't know know what is usual debian policy regarding this use case. I
> suppose it occured multiple times.
> 
> I can't be sure that sid version is really working, it just does not show
> any error. Could tatiana do some 'real' testing?

As far as I understood Tatiana she did some effort to make the program
functional.  She has done some real life tests.

Kind regards

        Andreas.

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