gmerlin-avdecoder redux

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 11:33:51AM +0200, IOhannes m zmölnig wrote:
>On 08/15/2010 09:00 AM, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
>> On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 21:30:32 (CEST), IOhannes m zmölnig wrote:
>>
>> Well, the point of symbols file is actually to review the list of 
>> symbols manually, so automatically updating it really defeats its 
>> purpose.
>>
>> If (and only if) you are really sure that no other package actually 
>> uses the removed symbols, then it's OK to remove them.
>
>well, libgmerlin-avdec1 has never been in Debian, so no other package 
>can possibly depend on symbols in this package. so i guess, we are safe 
>on this side.
>
>otoh, libgmerlin-avdec1 has been in marillat's debian-multimedia. 
>packages that used this package and depend on the symbols, will break.
>
>how is this normally dealt with?

In my opinion Debian is upstream to Marillats archive, Ubuntu, 
Skolelinux and a lot of others, and if any of those start being 
"creative" and do things not in Debian, then it is their own headache to 
untangle themselves again if it clashes with what Debian decides to do 
later on.

In other words, it makes sense to me to have it in mind now that we 
happen to know about this issue, but if we cannot solve a clash with a 
downstream distro easily and without carrying odd baggage in the package 
afterwards, then we should let it clash and leave it to downstream to 
solve it at their end.  Perhaps even be nice and inform them that we are 
aware of this clash (but without apologizing - it really is their own 
fault IMO).

...but that's me.  I can very well imagine others here having different 
opinion, if not about Marillat then about Ubuntu.  We had a recent 
discussion about derivative-specific package dependencies with the 
result that I will keep baggage in the source (but not in binary 
packages) regarding "firefox" (shipped in Ubuntu but not Debian) using 
dpkg-vendor.


Regards,

   - Jonas

-- 
  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/attachments/20100815/5ae6ad14/attachment.pgp>