[Pkg-javascript-devel] Bug#862051: nodejs-legacy: possibly drop this package, now that ax25-node has been removed?

[Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult]

On 18.05.2017 22:12, Jérémy Lal wrote:
> Package: nodejs-legacy
> Version: 6.10.2~dfsg-1
> Followup-For: Bug #862051
> 
> I would love to do that, but the reason behind the rename came from
> https://bugs.debian.org/614907.

I'd strongly advise against that. Upstream still insists in keeping that
ambiguous name, which is pretty distro-unfriendly - seems they're still
living in their own subspace bubble.

IMHO, we should concentrate on a automatic packaging system, which can
handle these thousands of nano-packages w/ MVCC properly. (eg. generate
the control files from package.json)

A few ideas:

* install individual packages into some prefix *outside* the search
  usual path, w/ full version string in the dirname:

  .../pkg_a-a.b.c
  .../pkg_a-d.e.f
  .../pkg_b-x.y.z
  .....

  or:

  .../pkg_a/a.b.c
  ...

* all versions can be installed in parallel (maybe just major+minor,
  but treat separate patchlevels the same package) - at *least*
  different majors *must* be separate packages, or things will break
  horribly (just had that trouble, few days ago)

* create symlinks to the recent versions similar to .so's on postinstall
  (kind of ldconfig for nodejs ;-))

* when building w/ scoped dependencies, add proper symlinks in the
  package's private 'node_modules' subdir - if no version given,
  symlink the major version (which it was built against), otherwise
  the exact version (maybe leave off the patchlevel)

* implement that in a npm drop-in replacement, to make the transition
  minimally-invasive


--mtx