Bug#662114: ack: non-active upstream and there is nkf

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

Osamu Aoki wrote on Sun, 4 Mar 2012 07:51:02 UTC:
> I think nkf is the tool of choice for the Japanese encoding converter
> with good huristics capability.  Otherwise, we have iconv.

Let's compare their usage with popcon:
http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=ack%2Cnkf&show_installed=on&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1

nkf seems clearly used more often since about 2008. (Wouldn't be fair
to compare it against iconv since that comes from the package
libc-bin. :-)

But ack's usage nevertheless still rises slowly, now around 240
installations -- which is not "nothing". Even "vote" is around 40:
http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=ack

> This upstream changelog is from 1994.  And Debian package has not
> changed from oldstable. manpage is less than adquate. tool does not
> handle UTF-8.
> 
> there is no dependency problem for removal.
> 
> Do you think we should keep this in our archive or just forgot to
> request removel?

There is a similar request in Ubuntu at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1264444 which refers to this bug
report.

One thing where a removal of ack would help a lot would be with the
ack-grep package (of which I'm one of the maintainers):

We had to rename the included binary as well as the package from
upstream's name "ack" to "ack-grep" since a package and binary named
"ack" already existed.

Hence a removal of ack would likely trigger the removal of the quite
large renaming-patch in ack-grep (plus adding a conflicts against the
old "ack" package) and, one release later, the renaming of the package
from ack-grep to ack.

ack-grep has way more installations and usage than ack:
http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=ack%2Cack-grep&show_installed=on&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1

(Popcon diffs alone does surely not validate a removal of ack. But I
think it's worth mentioning it in this discussion as even without the
knowledge of this naming conflict someone thinks about ack's removal.)

		Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
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