What about the removed dependencies?

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

2012/5/6 Dominique Dumont <dod at debian.org>:
> Le Wednesday 2 May 2012 19:31:28, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo a écrit :
>> I'm not in favour of spending time seeing which of these 400+ will
>> fail to build, either.
>
> I've just seen that you've already put back all the dependencies and uploaded
> all the packages. Can't say that's my favorite solution, but I understand your
> decision.

Not really, no... let me explain.

I updated packages now and then (a few of them recently), to fix small
lintian issues, and even intentionally to trigger a rebuild so they
are guaranteed to be in good shape before the freeze.  Of these:

a) sdl-net1.2 and sdl-stretch didn't contain any changes to dependencies;

b) I created libsdl-console in git; but I need you to sponsor it (<---
reminder).  No changes to dependencies either.

c) sdl-mixer1.2, I modified the dependencies *in the git repository*,
but actually there was no released version with the build-depends
removed out there, so as a precaution while this was being discussed,
I reverted the patch to let the build-deps untouched.

d) sdl-image1.2 I did revert the behaviour (the released version was
already without the build-depends for a couple of months), since I
needed it to build libsdl-console and had a FTBFS bug unrelated to the
dependencies (#669504).  But since I was at it I put the dependencies
back, because I thought that it was the most sensible course of action
(especially since the incipient criticism of debian-devel@ when I
uploaded it).  I don't expect that for putting the dependencies back,
the packages depending on sdl-image1.2 start to remove dependencies
again.

e) but I didn't touch libsdl1.2, which is of course The Biggie, with
~60% of machines having it installed.  We need to decide what to do
with this one.


On a personal note, let me thank you for defending us in
debian-devel at .  I was busy during the last few days, and now I don't
know if it's a good idea to chime in, but I think that it's unfair
that you take the beating when it was Felix and me who caused the
trouble.


>> So, finally, I propose to drop them in
>> {SDL2,immediately-after-release}, whichever comes first.
>
> Okay, we'll need to be careful with the com.

Yes, I expect release managers, QA and so on to be angry if they have
to intervene to fix lots of FTBFS packages in hundreds of
semi-abandoned crappy games just because removing a few dependencies.

Of course that it's what it should happen, and that it's unfair that
other people have to do the work, but to have wheezy released I have
no doubt that many people would have to work hard, without being their
fault either.

If I was DD I could help with NMUing the games, but as I said before
I'm not much in favour of starting to add patches right now that
because I think that it's futile to expect that maintainers of the
games react quickly (before the freeze) or even a few months after
that; so we wouldn't meet our goal of being able to remove all
build-depends, anyway.

Cheers.