[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#293171: Moving {add|remove}-shell from passwd to debianutils

[Christian Perrier]

I asked for advices in debian-devel about the best way to achieve this:

Initial plan was:
> The plan we draw is the following:
> 
> 1) shadow package maintainers upload passwd which 
>    "Depends: debianutils (<= 2.14.3)"
>    this version *still* includes the utilities   
> 
> 2) we warn Clint
> 
> 3) He uploads debianutils 2.15 with the utilities
> 
> 4) He warns us..:-)
> 
> 5) We upload passwd *without* the utilities and 
>    "Depends: debianutils (>= 2.15)"
> 
> 6) we might need to later warn maintainers of shell packages which
>    maybe depend on passwd just because they need the utilities


The plan seems a little overflated and some have commented that a
simpler plan would be OK:

1) Clint uploads debianutils with "Replaces: passwd
   (<=current_version) and the utilities


2) We (eventually at the same time) upload shadow without the utilities
   with "Depends: debianutils (>=new_version)" so that passwd
   cannot be upgraded if the debianutils with the utilities is not here

3) we warn maintainers of shell packages to remove the dependency on
   passwd

4) when all shell packages have been fixed, we can remove the
versioned dependency on debianutils

1) and 2) happening at the same time (provided we build on the same
architecture)) guarantees that upgrades for this architecture will
work fine the day after.

As we cannot control the autobuilders, it is likely that some delays
happen where the new debianutils will not be upgradable as long as
passwd hasn't been built as well.....or the contrary. But the
utilities will always be here.

Comments?

An upload of shadow will happen as soon as both the following
conditions have been met:

-upstream releases 4.0.13
-4.0.12-6 has reached testing

This is likely to occur during next week...