On 20/03/17 20:03, Hilko Bengen wrote: > Hi, > > with s-nail/14.8.14/3 (2016-12-05), I removed the "Provides: mailx" from > s-nail, the successor of heirloom-mailx, in response to #847049. At the > time I neglected to check for packages that had "heirloom-mailx | mailx" > or "s-nail | mailx" dependencies. This led to the situation that > packages that need a functioning /usr/bin/mail or /usr/bin/mailx now may > no longer get one via the dependency. > > I see two ways to handle this for stretch: > > (1) File grave bugs against the affected packages. Most patches for > debian/control files should be trivial (replace heirloom-mailx with > bsd-mailx), so I would provide those and possibly offer to NMU. > > (2) Add a bsd-mailx dependency to the the heirloom-mailx transitional > package so that a dependency on heirloom-mailx still guarantees that > "proper" /usr/bin/mail and /usr/bin/mailx are present. This would > provide an instant solution but the heirloom-mailx will disappear after > the stretch release and then the affected packages will need to be > changed anyhow.
They will need to be modified in any case, but postponing this means we don't have to instantly change all the rdeps. So I think (2) would be fine. Except that maybe you should depend on "bsd-mailx | mailx". Then during buster, you can file those bugs and change those dependencies, and then remove the transitional heirloom-mailx package. Cheers, Emilio
