[xml/sgml-pkgs] Too many xerces versions in sarge: can we get rid of some?

[Jay Berkenbilt]

Jay Berkenbilt <qjb@debian.org> wrote:

> Executive summary: As we both know, xerces24 is gone now.  I'll try to
> make a decision about libxml-xerces-perl quickly.  I'd really rather
> see xerces26 in sarge than xerces25, but I could be convinced that
> having xerces25 only is better than having xerces26 and xerces25 --
> we'll have to see about xalan first.  Obviously if xerces26 is removed
> from sarge, it should stay in sid.  Now for the full response...

Guess what... there's a newer XML::Xerces: 2.5.0-3 was released last
June, but it must not have been announced on the announce list (or I
missed it), and the xerces-perl web page has not been updated.  I
found it on CPAN after seeing that the upstream mailing list still has
some small amount of traffic.  That means libxml-xerces-perl, if we
keep it, depends upon 2.5.0 only.  Now I'm inclined to think that we
should consider having xerces25 and xerces26 in sarge -- two versions
isn't so horrible.

In any case, at least for now, I'm uploading
libxml-xerces-perl_2.5.0-3-1 and requesting removal of xerces23.

It's likely that anon-proxy, gdal, and qgis will work with any version
of xerces.  It's certain that libxml-xerces-perl will only work with
xerces25.  It's possible that xalan18 will only work with xerces25.
It's certain that xalan19 will work with xerces26, but that version is
not packaged.

If we MUST only keep one version of xerces in sarge, then it should
probably be xerces25 as this means we can keep libxml-xerces-perl and
anon-proxy and xalan don't require any changes.  In that case, gdal
and qgis must be updated to depend upon xerces25 rather than xerces26.

If we can keep both xerces25 and xerces26 in sarge, then we just have
to decide what to do about the other packages.  Probably gdal and
qgis, which depend upon xerces directly only (i.e. not directly and
indirectly through xalan) may as well depend upon xerces26.  Then
xerces25 supports only those things that must depend upon an old
version.  If xalan19 goes into sarge instead of xalan18, then only
libxml-xerces-perl depends upon xerces25.  Ugh.

How strongly do you feel about having only one version of xerces in
sarge?  If we have only one version, having it be xerces25 is
definitely the easiest way to achieve that.

-- 
Jay Berkenbilt <qjb@debian.org>