On 2020-10-22 21:08 +0100, Sudip Mukherjee wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2020 at 09:44:14AM +0200, Sven Joachim wrote:
>> Package: getmail6
>> Version: 6.7-1
>> Severity: serious
>>
>> Your package ships /usr/bin/getmail and various other files owned by the
>> getmail package, here is a complete list:
> <snip>
>>
>> A Conflicts with getmail would solve that, however I think it would also
>> be desirable to work out a transition plan for bullseye. The getmail
>> package is not installable there, and dist-upgrades from buster are
>> going to remove python and its reverse dependencies including getmail.
>
> I was aware of the file conflicts and I was thinking of adding "Conflicts:"
> but when I was testing in my vm I did "dist-upgrade" and old getmail was
> removed. And since 'getmail' has been removed from 'testing', so I assumed
> it will not cause any problem. Apparently, I was wrong. :(
It is true that dist-upgrades would have removed getmail, but we also
support partial upgrades in Debian. Additionally, there is now the
python-is-python2 package which Provides python, so apt might choose to
install that and leave the old getmail package in place.
> I am not sure how the transition will work here, I only know about the
> library transition process.
I was thinking about taking over the getmail binary package from
src:getmail and make it a transitional package for getmail6, so that
users upgrading from Buster won't be left in the cold. But that is not
something you should do unilaterally, please talk to the getmail
maintainer and ask him about this plans.
Once Charles Cazabon releases an official version with Python3 support,
Debian might want to switch back to it, but I am afraid this is not
going to happen before the Bullseye freeze.
> Do you want me to add "Conflicts" and upload for now?
That would be good, to getmail6 into testing ASAP.
Cheers,
Sven
