Package: lintian
Version: 2.116.3
Severity: normal
X-Debbugs-Cc: debian...@lists.debian.org
There are two classes of obsolete package that I'd like to be able to
detect programmatically and discourage via Lintian checks, to reduce the
need for mass-bug-filing:
1. Obsolete transitional packages that will be removed, but are relatively
trivial to move away from with minimal human input: policykit-1,
libfontconfig1-dev, libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (in some cases there is a
decision to be made on which successor package(s) are the right ones to
depend on, in other cases the new name is a drop-in replacement and
could be done programmatically)
2. Obsolete libraries etc. that can require significant porting effort in
upstream code: GTK 2 -> 3 (-> 4), FUSE 2 -> 3, SDL 1 -> 2 (-> 3
eventually), Qt major versions and so on
It seems more appropriate to use a higher severity for the first category
(which are Debian-specific and relatively trivial to fix) than the
second category (which require upstream code changes to port away from)
- at least until the point at which we start seriously trying to remove
the deprecated library from the distribution, at which point we could
consider raising their tag severity.
Are these both intended to be in-scope for data/fields/obsolete-packages
and depends-on-obsolete-package, or is there a distinction that should be
made between them?
Perhaps the first category should be listed as "obsolete packages",
and the second should be a new list of "deprecated packages" or
"obsolescent packages" with a lower tag severity? (Which could for example
include GTK 2, FUSE 2, SDL 1 as of 2023)
Perhaps it would even be useful to have a third category, "superseded
packages" or something, for packages that are still actively maintained
and still fine to use, but have a newer stable release available which
upstreams should ideally be moving towards? (Like GTK 3, which has been
superseded by GTK 4 but is still maintained - info or pedantic would
probably be the right level for dependencies on GTK 3 as of 2023)
See also #1029187 which discusses the (high) severity currently used
for depends-on-obsolete-package.
smcv
