[xml/sgml-pkgs] Bug#1080177: transition: libxml2

[Aron Xu]

Package: release.debian.org
Severity: normal
User: release.debian.org at packages.debian.org
Usertags: transition
X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-xml-sgml-pkgs at lists.alioth.debian.org,
aron at debian.org, libxml2 at packages.debian.org
Control: affects -1 + src:libxml2

Dear Release Managers:

I'd like to request a transition slot to upload libxml2 for unstable
and start this transition.

libxml2 upstream has introduced some breaking changes to libxml2's ABI
, but upstream has concerns about bumping SONAME at the moment[1]. As
discussed previously through mails[2] and IRC, I'd like to do a
transition by renaming the binary package from libxml2 to libxml2n
(the letter "n" is randomly picked) without changing the library
SONAME.Since there are a few hundreds of direct reverse deps of
libxml2 in Debian, an entry of "Provides: libxml2 (=
${source:Version})" is added to avoid breaking the archive heavily
during the transition. It will be removed after the transition has
completed and reverse dependencies have migrated to depend on the new
package name.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all those involved in this work.

The Ben file auto-generated in the transition page looks fine to me:

title = "libxml2";
is_affected = .depends ~ /\b(libxml2n|libxml2)\b/;
is_good = .depends ~ /\b(libxml2n)\b/;
is_bad = .depends ~ /\b(libxml2)\b/;

Thanks.

[1]https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/issues/751
[2]https://bugs.debian.org/1073508