[Pkg-zsh-devel] zsh-beta vs zsh Debian package

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

reviving this thread from September about the transition from the
zsh-beta to the zsh package...

Clint Adams wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 01:45:49PM +0200, Axel Beckert wrote:
> > > For zsh, there are zsh and zsh-beta, but I don't really see the point
> > > of having both in stable (this may have been interesting in the past,
> > > but it seems that in the past few years, zsh has evolved slowly enough
> > > so that only one version would be needed in stable).
> > 
> > I agree.
> 
> It's a relic of the odd-and-even versioning system that no longer exists.
> I kept with it mostly out of inertia and there not seeming to be much
> harm in having a snapshot in stable.  I agree that there is also not
> much point in having it either.
> 
> > Cc'ing the Debian Zsh Packaging Team and Clint for comments as Clint
> > currently maintains the zsh-beta package.
> 
> I don't mind either way, though if there's any reason an upgrade from
> squeeze would remove zsh-beta, maybe it's better to have a transition
> package with a symlink to zsh for those few crazy people who use
> zsh-beta as their login shell.

We decided back then that it would be too much fuzz to get this
transition into Wheezy as there were a few differences between the zsh
and zsh-beta packages which could have made a difference somewhere.

> Speaking of transitions, did you guys come up with a plan for moving
> zsh-beta under the aegis of the group?

In the meanwhile yes. :-)

My plan is to make zsh-beta and zsh-beta-doc transitional packages
generated by the zsh source package, i.e. to drop the zsh-beta source
package as soon as Wheezy is released.

The branch "abe/no-beta" in our git repository is my proposal for the
transition. The according control file would look like this:

http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/zsh.git;a=blob;f=debian/control;hb=abe/no-beta

Binary and source packages recently generated from this branch can be
found at those two locations:

http://jenkins.grml.org/view/Debian/job/zsh-binaries/52/architecture=amd64/
http://jenkins.grml.org/view/Debian/job/zsh-binaries/52/architecture=i386/

There's though still some things to do:

* Adding a symbolic link /bin/zsh-beta -> /bin/zsh or similar to the
  zsh-beta transitional package, so that admins have a chance to
  migrate users with /bin/zsh-beta as login shell

* Checking the zsh-beta packages for their prerm and postrm scripts
  and including them in the transitional package, too.

* Testing what really happens, if a user has /bin/zsh-beta as login
  shell and the transitional packages are installed.

If that plan looks fine for all of us, I'd merge that feature branch
into the main "debian" branch.

I also plan to upload a 5.0.2-3 package which fixes some issues I
missed when uploading 5.0.2-2, especially #697808 and #698224. Not yet
sure if I'd upload that including or excluding the "abe/no-beta"
feature branch.

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