package: qa.debian.org user: qa.debian....@packages.debian.org usertags: udd x-debbugs-cc: debian-rele...@lists.debian.org
The debian rust team makes heavy use of virtual packages to reduce the number of real packages in the archive (and in some cases the number of trips through new) while retaining flexibility to split if necessary (either for multiple versions of a crate or where featuresets that previously had the same dependencies diverge). Unfortunately the key packages script does not take virtual packages into account. The result of this is that a large number of rust packages that ought to be on the key packages list (as a result of firefox depending on cbindgen which build-depends on a bunch of rust packages) are not on there. This raises a couple of questions. 1. What should the policy be on handling virtual packages? it seems to me that virtual packages with only a single provider should be treated much the same as real packages but what about those with multiple providers? ignore them? pick one according to priority and popcon? include them all? (it seems like the latter could lead to unnessacery growth of the key packages list). 2. how to actually implement that? it looks to me like it would involve extending add_pkg_sources in https://salsa.debian.org/qa/udd/-/blob/master/scripts/update-key-packages.pl but I'm not a perl guy or a udd guy.
