> Build breakage out of the void is not nice, usually maintainers > inform > reverse build dependencies them before making such a breaking change.
Yes, correct, and I'm sorry about this. It simply didn't occur to me that the change would create a build breakage. > The majority of users are using the default of treating Recommends > as dependencies, for them it doesn't make any difference whether > Recommends or Depends is used. > > Not installing Recommends is supported, and desirable in many > embedded/server/container scenarios. That's why bsdmainutils Recommends bsdextrautils and always has. The only argument here is whether it should be a hard Depends instead. > Installing bsdmainutils from unstable in buster breaks commands like > man ncal | cat > I would not be surprised if there is somewhere in Debian some package > that would do something like that for whatever good or bad reason in > a postinst or prerm. I didn't find any usage of man in a postinst on my system, but I have not checked all packages. > BTW: The naming of the packages is confusing. Agreed. > "extra" sounds like the more obscure utils, > enhanching the more commonly used "main" tools. > Looking at the tools shipped, the opposite seems to be true. Correct, this has to do with the old naming. The more obscure tools are still build out of the bsdmainutils sources. > One could make the point that bsdmainutils should > be a (transitional?) metapackage depending on all > the tools it previously provided. That's my thinking, too. The remaining tools in bsdmainutils are ncal (which should go into a separate package) and a few tools we could switch to util-linux or remove. Michael -- Michael Meskes Michael at Fam-Meskes dot De, Michael at Meskes dot (De|Com|Net|Org) Meskes at (Debian|Postgresql) dot Org Jabber: michael at xmpp dot meskes dot org VfL Borussia! Força Barça! SF 49ers! Use Debian GNU/Linux, PostgreSQL
