On 2023-03-11 11:11 +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
> Control: tags -1 + moreinfo
>
> On 2023-03-11 09:40 +0100, Holger Levsen wrote:
>
>> Package: libtinfo-dev
>> Version: 6.4-2
>> Severity: normal
>> user: qa.debian....@packages.debian.org
>> usertags: transitional
>>
>> Please drop the transitional package libtinfo-dev (from the source package
>> ncurses) after the release of bookworm, it has been released with buster and
>> bullseye already...
>
> I know, but some packages are still build-depending on it. If I am
> informed correctly, sbuild prefers real packages over virtual ones when
> resolving build dependencies, and if libtinfo-dev were to be dropped,
> the old version remains as cruft in the archive and is uninstallable.
> Note that libtinfo-dev has a strict versioned dependency on libtinfo6
> because of the /usr/share/doc symlink.
>
> If that analysis is correct, packages build-depending on libtinfo-dev
> will enter status BD-Uninstallable, which is bad.
After taking a closer look, this seems to be all red herring. Sbuild
uses apt for resolving the build dependencies, and while apt prefers
virtual packages over real ones, it has no problem to use the virtual
one (libncurses-dev in this case) in case the real one is uninstallable
or insufficient.
I guess I'll drop the transitional packages in an upload to experimental
and see what happens with the pseudo-excuses[1].
Filing bugs against reverse (build-)dependencies would be doable for
libtinfo-dev, but for libncursesw5-dev (#1032740) and libncurses5-dev
(for which you did not file a bug, for whatever reason) this is a
non-starter due to the large number of them.
Cheers,
Sven
1. https://release.debian.org/britney/pseudo-excuses-experimental.html
