[Pkg-javascript-devel] Bug#754462: Bug#862051: nodejs (6.11.2~dfsg-1) experimental; urgency=medium

[Didier 'OdyX' Raboud]

Le mardi, 29 août 2017, 12.32:19 h CEST Sam Hartman a écrit :
> >>>>> "Thorsten" == Thorsten Glaser <t.glaser at tarent.de> writes:
>     Thorsten> Hi,
> 
>     >> * Restore /usr/bin/node following CTTE #862051 Let's try to drop
>     >> /usr/bin/nodejs before buster.  Replaces and Conflicts
>     >> nodejs-legacy.  Closes: #754462.
> 
>     Thorsten> please do NOT completely replace an ABI between releases.
>     Thorsten> Leave /usr/bin/nodejs there for at least one more release.
> 
> 
> I agree.
> Even if you get everything in Debian fixed, you won't know about user
> scripts that have been designed around what Debian does.

Right.

Searching for "/usr/bin/nodejs" on github [0] shows around 27'500 occurences.

> Giving people a release to deal with transitions is a great thing to do
> when there's no good reason not to.
> Maintaining a symlink for a release seems a low cost.

True. On the other hand, the fact that Debian "created" /usr/bin/nodejs also 
means it's on Debian's hands to eventually remove it.

For good reasons, Debian forcibly introduced a special-case when Node.js first 
appeared in a stable release through only shipping it under /usr/bin/nodejs. 
That forced hundreds of projects to cope with that, probably often through 
supporting both /usr/bin/node and /usr/bin/nodejs I suspect.

I'm quite convinced that large parts of the Node.js ecosystem will cope well 
without any /usr/bin/nodejs available in stretch.

So I'm not convinced it's really worth the trouble to keep it around for 
another stable release; I'd probably be fine with a swap of the setup we had 
(with the convenience symlink in a different and not-installed-by-default 
package).

> For that matter I really can't see a good reason to ever drop the
> symlink.

I want Debian to be able to move on and ahead; cleaning up past special-cases 
from our stable releases is good. We only support stable-to-stable upgrades 
for good reasons and removing such convenience symlinks falls in the same 
category as cleanup of maintainer scripts' code for oldstable-to-stable paths. 
I would strongly support removal of the symlink in bullseye.

Cheers,
    OdyX

[0] https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22%2Fusr%2Fbin%2Fnodejs
%22&type=Code