[Pkg-javascript-devel] Bug#925211: uglifyjs conflicts with webpack which can hinder JS maintainers work

[Jérémy Lal]

Hi,

it takes some time to understand what's happening here, and since
fixing it properly will require quite some work on multiple packages,
i add my notes to this bug report.

Nota Bene: i use "webpack" here but the sake of the example.

# Situation
Because uglify version 2 compiles software that uglify version 3 does not
compile
correctly, and vice-versa, there are two versions in debian:
* uglifyjs-2.8.29 builds node-uglify which provides uglifyjs
* uglify-js-3.4.9 builds uglifyjs

# Solutions (in my order of preference, to be adapted)
1. Packages not building with uglifyjs 2 should be fixed to build with
uglifyjs 3.
Not a trivial thing to do and it's deep freeze now.

2. Distribute /usr/bin/uglifyjsN and fix all packages calling
/usr/bin/uglifyjs to call
uglifyjsN, when they can't be fixed to use latest version of
/usr/bin/uglifyjs.

# Slight improvement that might be done for buster
IF apt behaves like i think it will, to allow both /usr/bin/uglifyjs and
node-uglify
package to be installed:
* uglify-js-3.4.9 builds node-uglify-js which provides uglifyjs and
conflicts uglifyjs (<< 3.5.0-2),
and remove uglifyjs binary package (to get it to be pure virtual package).

However, if dependencies both try to install node-uglify and node-uglify-js
it will still fail,
but it's not as bad as a direct conflict with /usr/bin/uglifyjs.
It could be misleading, though, to have an unexpected version, so maybe the
best thing
is to do nothing for Buster.

Jérémy
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