[Pkg-rust-maintainers] Bug#945542: debcargo -- Adds and removes binary packages

[Sylvestre Ledru]

Le 26/11/2019 à 20:02, Bastian Blank a écrit :
> Hi Sylvestre
> 
> On Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 07:31:05PM +0100, Sylvestre Ledru wrote:
>>> I'm filling this as bug now.  Please discuss this issue there.
>> First, this isn't random. This is generated from the features of the crate.
>> I am not sure to understand what is wrong with that? It isn't uncommon to add/remove
>> binaries from a source package (I am doing that often with llvm-toolchain).
> 
> No.  But is not common to do that automatically, on thousands of source
> packages.  So much you even asked the ftp team to drop part of their
> checks on new binary packages.
Yeah, I did ask for this and I still think that we (Debian) should evolve to follow
the evolution of software but I understand that you aren't happy with this change.

I know I am biased (Mozilla employee here) but Rust is too me the best thing that
happened to system programming for a very long time.

>>> I'm setting it to serious as several ftp team members told you not to do
>>> that.
>> Could you please explain what you mean by "that"?
> 
> Adding new binary packages automatically.  This whole thread was about
> the problems of adding new binary packages all the time and you wanted
> to way around binary-NEW for them.  
I agree that the way we package Rust crates is unorthodox. Just like we
deal with other "uncommon" languages like ocaml.

Maybe there is a better way. I honestly don't know. However, I think that as a
packager of a few rust-based binary, it is really a pleasure to package rust software.
Cargo and the dependencies mechanisms are working very well (esp when you come from the C/C++ world)
even if we have some corner cases which we indeed need to address.

Also, I would like to highlight that nobody told me "not to do that". Such changes have been approved
by ftpmasters for a month without, to my knowledge, any complaint. So, your message was a surprise to me.

> Not making the scope clear was my bad and I want to apologize for it.
Thanks for that!

> 
>> AFAIK, it happens just twice (librust-web-sys-dev & librust-winapi-dev) on Rust packages (on 681 packages).
>> But I don't have the knowledge to fix that issue... :/
> 
> Okay.  Who does?  
Josh Triplett (added as cc) or Ximin Luo are probably the most experienced folks.

> Please remove the wontfix from the bug about the Provides, to declare it needs to be fixed.
For context, Bastian mentioned in private the bug https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=942898

And I am not the one who set the wontfix tag and for now, despite the unorthodox packaging method,
I haven't seen any blocking argument (besides more work for ftpmaters), only potential future issues which don't
happen for now. The CPU/bandwidth overhead is currently minimal.

Cheers,
Sylvestre