Seems we can safely salvage animals rather than remove it (Was: Bug#1124011: animals: Should animals be removed from unstable?)

[Andreas Tille]

Control: retitle -1 ITS: animals
Thanks

Hi Philipp,

Am Sun, Jan 04, 2026 at 11:17:50AM +0000 schrieb Philipp Schafft:
> I just uploaded a fresh version:
> https://software.keep-cool.org/dl/animals/animals-202601041054Z.tar.gz

This is really great news!  Thanks a lot.


@Alberto, thanks to the help from Philipp I'd be interested in salvaging
animals into Debian Games team.  I've created a Git repository on
Salsa[1].  I'll follow the ITS procedure and will wait 21 days before
uploading to delayed=10.

 
> Please have a look and report back anything that seems off (via
> individual tickets or directly to me, just keep me at least Cc-ed).
> 
> From this point forward:
>  * Please update the website address in the package (http -> https)

Done in Git.

>  * The database path changed (.db -> .sqlite3). This might require
>    package updates (see debian/rules)

Are you sure the *path* changed?  This seems just to be a change of the
database file name.  Since only pathes are adjusted I do not think any
change is needed.

>  * The old database format is no longer readable with this version.
>    maybe a NEWS entry would be good?

Good hint.  Please review

    https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/animals/-/blob/master/debian/NEWS?ref_type=heads

>  * I *recommend* to keep the old database files for now so no user data
>    is lost. If anyone wants their files converted I could likely figure
>    something out.

While this might be most probably helpful we can't easily include a
conversion tool into the package since this will probably need libdb5.3
again which we want to get rid of.

>  * The dependencies switch from libdb* to libsqlite*.

Done.
 
> I think there is more polishing to do (e.g. manpage). I would maybe go
> for another release soonish to fix that and whatever you might find.
> But this one should resolve this ticket.

Yes, this is really nice.  Thanks a lot for it.

> Thanks to everyone for their support!

Kind regards
    Andreas.


[1] https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/animals 

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