On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 08:13:39AM +0200, Andrius Merkys wrote: > On 2021-03-10 21:30, Andreas Tille wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 08:44:36PM +0530, Nilesh Patra wrote: > >>> 2. Vcs-* URLs in debian/control will break after moving repositories. > >>> Not sure if these URLs are of any use for removed packages, though. > > > > That's an additional point to my argument about automatic tools parsing > > the repositories. > > > >> It doesn't matter too much, IMHO. At any point in time if someone would > >> bring those packages back to archive, they'd have to use > >> s.d.o/med-team/pkg anyway. > >> Plus they aren't in the archive either. URLs breaking is of more > >> relevance only when they are in the archive > > > > True. But packages are residing in oldstable quite some time and they > > reside for ever in snapshots. Besides this a package removed from > > Debian can possibly survive several user machines if just upgrades from > > one release to the next one is done. I think several of my boxes were > > upgraded over four releases or so. If there is no conflict the packages > > might reside on user machines for the life time of the machine. > > This is a strong argument against moving the repositories. It convinces > me that we should not do that.
I am +1 on not moving repositories (unless the VCS will handle redirects forever - which is difficult to guarantee and outside of the control of the team). There may be links in the BTS or outside of the Debian ecosystem referencing a commit or file that are useful for someone hoping to understand the history of a bug or provenance of a fix, even after the package is no longer in the archive. Cheers, tony
