[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#596283: Freeze exception: shadow / possible cron update?

[Christian Kastner]

On 09/21/2010 01:36 PM, Julien Cristau wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 12:58:36 +0200, Sven Joachim wrote:
> 
>> How about letting cron depend on the new passwd package instead of
>> breaking the old?  ISTM this would have been the better action for
>> #541415 as well.
>>
> Sounds like that would work.

TBH, I'd much rather follow your previous proposal and let both do the
backups in squeeze than add a Depends: on a required package (albeit a
specific version).

Taking a step back, the only reason this issue is being discussed is
because package cron has historically provided a service that today no
one could reasonably expect from it. If I were to remove this feature
from cron today, without warning or collaboration with shadow, I'd be
very interested in the justification of a possible bug report (apart
from rudeness :-)

Given that nobody wants a Breaks:, that I don't want to depend on
package passwd to ensure backups of files not related to cron, and that
the situation of a no-one-backups-up, namely cron (>= -115) and (passwd
<< -2), is something that I can only see possible in theory, I think
shipping cron -114 and tolerating the dual-backup-confusion for the time
being is acceptable.

I'd then create -115 sometime much later, with neither Depends nor
Breaks. I'd actually even like to remove the present Breaks: for dpkg
then, for the same reasons as stated above.

Regards,
Christian