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Groups > linux.debian.bugs.dist > #1078123

Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils

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On 2021-10-24 19:08 +0000, Clint Adams wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 02:33:44PM +0100, Wookey wrote:
> > I think causing build failures is enough reason to say this. I don't
> > suppose that mine is the only one. Yes those builds are buggy and
> > should not do this, and we should make efforts to find out why bazel
> > (or possibly the build scripts it is operating on) is/are so crappy,
> > but for now I agree that reverting this is the right thing to do.
> > 
> > We have time to do this transition properly and quietly in the
> > background, without causing random breakage. A message about a binary
> > moving from one package to another does not need to be printed on
> > every usage of that binary. Indeed it is actively unhelpful to do so.
> 
> Boyuan packaged GNU which and uploaded it to NEW in August.  It is now
> October, and neither GNU which nor *BSD which nor any other which
> alternative is in unstable.  Presumably one of these could have put
> a band-aid on your bazel problem, though of course any version of
> `which` might output things to stderr for a variety of reasons.

That package is the band-aid I am currently using, but (because it has
indeed not progressed through NEW yet, which is presumably down to
ftpmaster bandwidth) it's a hassle where I have to make sure it is
made available in the build environment each time.

> Lots of things broke between buster and bullseye.

Most of them broke by accident or for good reasons. You broke this
semi-deliberately, by deciding not to manage a quiet background
transition of the which binary to some other package, but to print
a deprecation message and let other people deal with the fallout. OK,
maybe you expected the change to be harmless, but you didn't revert it
once it became clear that this was not a good way to do the
transition.

IIUC the tech committee have now told you to do it properly, as a
managed transition. Good.

> Is the difference that these packages aren't Essential?

The difference from where I am standing is the attitude of the
maintainer to doing things properly vs causing other people
hassle. Nobody is making you remove/move which. If you want to
move/remove which then do it in a way that doesn't break other
people's stuff (as much as possible). In this case that really isn't
hard to do (just wait until GNU which passes NEW, and preferably file
bugs on packages that now need to depend on it).

I didn't understand why you wanted to make this change in the first
place, and I don't understand why you didn't just revert the message
when it became clear that it was a problem, and I don't understand why
you are still trying to justify your somewhat bloody-minded approach
to this (should-have-been) minor issue, even after the tech comittee
have agreed that it was not a good approach.

Please, just remove the deprecation message, until GNU which is in
unstable (like you should have done a couple of months ago, when first
asked), then work out how the transition should go such that no-one
using which will actually notice or care. Then you can throw away the
hated binary :-) and we can all be happy.

I understand that it's galling to have the TC tell you to take a
different approach, especially when you've doubled-down on your
approach, but I'm afraid the TC is correct here, so please, stop
arguing, do what's best for the project, and soon enough this will all
be over, and we'll all have what we want. And you may (or may not)
choose to reflect on the the point that we _could_ have got to exactly
the same point without this argument if you'd made different choices.

From my personal point of view this is solved short-term the moment
the deprecation message is gone in unstable, and long term as soon as
GNU which enters unstable.

I hope this is my last-ever word on this tiresome subject.

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/

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Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> - 2021-09-15 00:40 +0200
  Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de> - 2021-09-15 09:30 +0200
    Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> - 2021-09-15 12:00 +0200
      Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de> - 2021-09-15 14:20 +0200
  Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2021-09-15 13:10 +0200
  Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> - 2021-09-16 23:40 +0200
  Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2021-09-17 00:10 +0200
  Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2021-09-17 00:10 +0200
    Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> - 2021-09-24 08:30 +0200
      Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Thorsten Glaser <t.glaser@tarent.de> - 2021-09-24 10:20 +0200
      Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org> - 2021-09-24 10:50 +0200
        Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> - 2021-09-24 14:20 +0200
      Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> - 2021-09-24 15:00 +0200
  Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> - 2021-09-25 04:30 +0200
    Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2021-09-25 12:40 +0200
      Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> - 2021-10-04 00:20 +0200
        Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2021-10-06 11:40 +0200
          Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> - 2021-10-06 12:40 +0200
          Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2021-10-06 18:20 +0200
  Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2021-10-11 02:00 +0200
  Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2021-10-11 02:10 +0200
    Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Sebastian Ramacher <sramacher@debian.org> - 2021-10-11 10:50 +0200
      Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com> - 2021-10-17 14:40 +0200
  Bug#994275: Draft resolution for reverting changes in debianutils Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2021-10-13 22:20 +0200
    Bug#994275: Draft resolution for reverting changes in debianutils David Bremner <david@tethera.net> - 2021-10-14 00:40 +0200
      Bug#994275: Draft resolution for reverting changes in debianutils Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> - 2021-10-17 15:40 +0200
      Bug#994275: Draft resolution for reverting changes in debianutils Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> - 2021-10-18 11:40 +0200
        Bug#994275: Draft resolution for reverting changes in debianutils Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl> - 2021-10-18 12:30 +0200
          Bug#994275: Draft resolution for reverting changes in debianutils Christoph Berg <myon@debian.org> - 2021-10-18 12:50 +0200
      Bug#994275: Draft resolution for reverting changes in debianutils Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2021-10-18 21:00 +0200
        Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> - 2021-10-24 21:20 +0200
          Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils tito <farmatito@tiscali.it> - 2021-10-26 13:00 +0200
          Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> - 2021-10-26 15:20 +0200
            Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> - 2021-10-26 21:20 +0200
              Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Thorsten Glaser <t.glaser@tarent.de> - 2021-10-26 22:00 +0200
                Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> - 2021-10-26 22:20 +0200
          Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> - 2021-10-29 10:10 +0200
    Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> - 2021-10-16 08:00 +0200
      Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Thorsten Glaser <t.glaser@tarent.de> - 2021-10-16 18:00 +0200
      Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com> - 2021-10-17 12:50 +0200
      Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2021-10-18 21:00 +0200
  Bug#994275: Call for votes on "Reverting breaking changes in debianutils" Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2021-10-20 21:40 +0200
    Bug#994275: Call for votes on "Reverting breaking changes in debianutils" Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org> - 2021-10-21 18:00 +0200
  Bug#994275: Call for votes on "Reverting breaking changes in debianutils" Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2021-10-20 21:40 +0200
    Bug#994275: Call for votes on "Reverting breaking changes in debianutils" David Bremner <david@tethera.net> - 2021-10-20 22:10 +0200
    Bug#994275: Call for votes on "Reverting breaking changes in debianutils" Christoph Berg <myon@debian.org> - 2021-10-22 20:50 +0200
    Bug#994275: Call for votes on "Reverting breaking changes in debianutils" Elana Hashman <ehashman@debian.org> - 2021-10-22 22:00 +0200
    Bug#994275: Call for votes on "Reverting breaking changes in debianutils" Margarita Manterola <marga@debian.org> - 2021-10-26 19:20 +0200
    Bug#994275: Call for votes on "Reverting breaking changes in debianutils" Niko Tyni <ntyni@debian.org> - 2021-10-26 21:20 +0200
    Bug#994275: Call for votes on "Reverting breaking changes in debianutils" Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2021-10-27 19:10 +0200
  Bug#994275: Reverting breaking changes in debianutils Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> - 2021-11-02 08:40 +0100

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