cross-posting to: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=966273 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=510368
stbuehler wrote: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=966273 > Is there any reason to keep FAM around any longer in your opinion, > given upstream is dead and there is gamin? > > Or, in other words, why didn't you file a package removal request? > > Imho providing a package that runs a (even if just local) service as > root doesn't combine well with a dead upstream with regards to > security. > > I see the following reverse dependencies in aptitude: > > fam: (recommends) gnubiff > > libfam0: (depends) > courier-base > courier-imap > doodled > gnubiff > libkf5coreaddons5 > lighttpd > omake > sqwebmail > > Is any of these known to actually need fam instead of gamin? Negative. I just scanned the source code and *none* require FAM. gamin limitations according to https://people.gnome.org/~veillard/gamin/differences.html "The functions FAMSuspendMonitor(), FAMResumeMonitor() and FAMMonitorCollection() are not implemented. They all raise problem of accumulating unbounded state on the server side and better handled at the client level if needed." A simple egrep "FAMMonitorCollection|FAMSuspendMonitor|FAMResumeMonitor" through source code finds that none of the above packages use those APIs except omake. omake provides its own implementation of the FAM APIs, and on Linux, uses its own implementation employing inotify(). omake provides a kqueue implementation for *BSD, and a Win32 implementation for Windows. On other platforms, it uses FAM. To repeat, on Linux, omake uses its own implementation of FAM APIs employing inotify(). See omake source code lib/configure/fam.install None of the other packages reference the APIs in FAM missing in gamin. doodle and omake reference FamErrlist[FAMErrno], but if FAM is removed, building and depending on gamin has consistent behavior. ==> Therefore, it should be possible to remove FAM from Bullseye, and to change package dependencies from libfam-dev to libgamin-dev in Bullseye. ==> What are the next steps to remove FAM from Bullseye? Can the following be turned into a package removal request? RFA: fam -- File Alteration Monitor https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=966273 Cheers, Glenn https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/courier http://www.courier-mta.org/repo.html https://github.com/svarshavchik/courier https://github.com/svarshavchik/courier-libs Debian packages: courier-base courier-imap sqwebmail https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/doodle http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/doodle/ https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnubiff http://gnubiff.sourceforge.net/ https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/kcoreaddons https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/kcoreaddons https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/lighttpd https://salsa.debian.org/debian/lighttpd https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/omake https://salsa.debian.org/ocaml-team/omake
