[Pkg-zsh-devel] Why does zsh-static depend on zsh? (And: Dropping debian/zsh-static.NEWS)

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

I just wondered why our zsh-static package depends on the zsh package.
Using git blame I traced that dependency back to this commit:

  commit 78ab02ffa00d1f1a149bed755b72ff0bf0ff4bbb
  Author: Frank Terbeck <ft at bewatermyfriend.org>
  Date:   Fri Feb 11 15:59:00 2011 +0100

    Initial `debian/' import

In other words: It's in there since before the Debian Zsh Team was
founded. Cc'ing Clint in the hope that he still remembers what the
reason for this dependency was. At least I didn't find any hint on
this dependency in debian/changelog.

I also checked https://snapshot.debian.org/binary/zsh-static/ if it
still has the first zsh-static package (4.0.0+4.0.1.pre4-4 from May
2001), but Debian Snapshots only reaches back to 4.0.4-33 from April
2002 (imported into Snapshots in 2009). But at least 4.0.4-33 already
has that dependency, so I suspect that this dependency was in there
from the birth of the zsh-static package a year before that upload.

I kinda suspect that it can be replaced nowadays by a dependency on
zsh-common (see also below for another hint towards that direction) or
maybe even completely removed. I'll probably do a test in a clean
chroot by installing zsh-static and then doing a "dpkg --purge
--force-depends zsh" or so.


Apropos zsh-static: While looking through debian/changelog for
"zsh-static", I stumbled upon this entry from 2015:

  * [01eea476] Add debian/zsh-static.NEWS with note about upcoming
    zsh-static removal.

It says:

  zsh (5.0.7-dev-2-1) experimental; urgency=low
  
    * zsh-static will go away soon. Object now if you need it and tell us
      why at pkg-zsh-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org.  See also
      http://noone.org/blog?-tags=zsh-static
  
   -- Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org>  Tue, 05 May 2015 12:09:14 +0200

I actually forgot about that plan even though we recently had a
zsh-static vs libc fight once again.

I checked our feedback on that blog-posting and we seem to have gotten
at least two some positive (well, one positive and one rather weird
;-) feedback about zsh-static.

One specific zsh-static feedback from Vincent Bernat might even give
an answer on my initial question:

> I am using zsh-static. This way, I am able to inject into almost any
> docker image that I want to use as a sandbox. I also bind-mount
> /usr/share/zsh in this case. I don't care about the user/group
> lookup for this case.

So I checked which package ship files in /usr/share/zsh/. And it's
not zsh but zsh-common. So I guess I just oversaw that /usr/share/zsh/
was likely the reason for that unclear zsh-static dependency on zsh
when splitting out the zsh-common package from the zsh package.

But back to the zsh-static removal topic:

Also the occasional bug reports about zsh-static, like the recent
https://bugs.debian.org/993843 show that there are active users
despite a slowly sinking popcon:
https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=zsh-static&show_installed=on&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1

So I just decided to drop that debian/zsh-static.NEWS entry from 6
years ago and keep fighting zsh-static vs libc bugs as Clint already
did back in 2003: https://bugs.debian.org/207218 — "changes in libc
cause zsh-static to immediately segfault" :-)

I'll probably not do an upload with that commit immediately, but it
will be part of the next source upload whenever that will be. So if
anyone wants to object and still warn our users about a future
zsh-static removal, please do so now. :-)

Another thing I'll do is to extend the zsh-static package description
as one of the (neutral) feedbacks on the zsh-static removal proposal
was a question from shirish what the difference between zsh and
zsh-static is. I'll take a bit of text from my answer to that question
and put it into the zsh-static long package description.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
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