Debian Bug report logs - #890598
RM: dolibarr -- ROM; too much work to maintain it properly in Debian

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Raphaël Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: RM: dolibarr -- ROM; too much work to maintain it properly in Debian

Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 15:48:23 +0100

Package: ftp.debian.org
Severity: normal

I'm the usual sponsor of dolibarr in Debian. The maintainer (and
upstream author) Eldy Destailleur announced me a few weeks ago that he
will no longer be maintaining Dolibarr within Debian because it was
too much of a pain to respect all the Debian requirements.

He explained to me that Dolibarr relies on 15 javascripts libraries (some of them
are dependencies of the libraries that Dolibarr are using in the first
place) and 5 PHP libraries.

Debian's requirement to provide a non-minified copy of the javascript is
really hard to meet for him because often the projects are only providing
the sources under the form a github link (and not under the form of
a non-minified javascript that we could put next to the minified file to
please lintian). He would have to spend a lot of times with the different
upstreams to get them to provide the non-minified file in a form that is
suitable for Debian. It's even likely that his requests would be dismissed
by multiple upstream authors leaving him in the inconvenient position of
having to remove features to be able to ship a policy-compliant Debian
package.

The requirement to use packaged versions of all the libraries is also
problematic. More often that not the version used by Dolibarr will not
match the version currently available in Debian and it's always a risk
to use a different version. Sometimes it will work just fine, sometimes it
will break.

Given all those constraints, he decided to stop trying to maintain
Dolibarr in Debian and the Dolibarr project will only provide an
unofficial .deb embedding all the libraries that they need.

I doubt anyone else is willing to maintain Dolibarr in Debian and I'm
thus requesting the package to be removed. Users are better served
by the upstream unofficial package rather than by Debian's outdated
package (it's outdated due to the difficulty of updating it in a
policy-compliant way).

I would hope that we could find a way to get the best of both worlds
but right now it seems that we don't have a good solution for that kind
of web application.

Thank you.

Message #10 received at 890598-close@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org>

To: 890598-close@bugs.debian.org

Cc: dolibarr@packages.debian.org

Subject: Bug#890598: Removed package(s) from unstable

Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2018 04:28:35 +0000

We believe that the bug you reported is now fixed; the following
package(s) have been removed from unstable:

  dolibarr | 5.0.4+dfsg3-1 | source, all

------------------- Reason -------------------
ROM; too much work to maintain it properly in Debian
----------------------------------------------

Note that the package(s) have simply been removed from the tag
database and may (or may not) still be in the pool; this is not a bug.
The package(s) will be physically removed automatically when no suite
references them (and in the case of source, when no binary references
it).  Please also remember that the changes have been done on the
master archive and will not propagate to any mirrors until the next
dinstall run at the earliest.

Packages are usually not removed from testing by hand. Testing tracks
unstable and will automatically remove packages which were removed
from unstable when removing them from testing causes no dependency
problems. The release team can force a removal from testing if it is
really needed, please contact them if this should be the case.

We try to close bugs which have been reported against this package
automatically. But please check all old bugs, if they were closed
correctly or should have been re-assigned to another package.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 890598@bugs.debian.org.

The full log for this bug can be viewed at https://bugs.debian.org/890598

This message was generated automatically; if you believe that there is
a problem with it please contact the archive administrators by mailing
ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Scott Kitterman (the ftpmaster behind the curtain)

Message #15 received at 890598@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Moritz Mühlenhoff <jmm@inutil.org>

To: Raphaël Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>, eldy@users.sourceforge.net

Cc: 890598@bugs.debian.org, team@security.debian.org

Subject: Re: RM: dolibarr -- ROM; too much work to maintain it properly in Debian

Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2018 12:32:24 +0100

On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 03:48:23PM +0100, Raphaël Hertzog wrote:
> Package: ftp.debian.org
> Severity: normal
> 
> I'm the usual sponsor of dolibarr in Debian. The maintainer (and
> upstream author) Eldy Destailleur announced me a few weeks ago that he
> will no longer be maintaining Dolibarr within Debian because it was
> too much of a pain to respect all the Debian requirements.

Laurent,
does this also extend to 3.5.5 and 4.0.2 releases currently shipped
in Debian? If so, I'd also request their removal from stable/oldstable
(e.g to prevent new stretch users from deploying a deprecated package)?

Cheers,
        Moritz

Message #20 received at 890598@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Moritz Mühlenhoff <jmm@inutil.org>

To: Moritz Mühlenhoff <jmm@inutil.org>

Cc: Raphaël Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>, eldy@users.sourceforge.net, 890598@bugs.debian.org, team@security.debian.org

Subject: Re: RM: dolibarr -- ROM; too much work to maintain it properly in Debian

Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2018 21:44:16 +0100

On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 12:32:24PM +0100, Moritz Mühlenhoff wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 03:48:23PM +0100, Raphaël Hertzog wrote:
> > Package: ftp.debian.org
> > Severity: normal
> > 
> > I'm the usual sponsor of dolibarr in Debian. The maintainer (and
> > upstream author) Eldy Destailleur announced me a few weeks ago that he
> > will no longer be maintaining Dolibarr within Debian because it was
> > too much of a pain to respect all the Debian requirements.
> 
> Laurent,
> does this also extend to 3.5.5 and 4.0.2 releases currently shipped
> in Debian? If so, I'd also request their removal from stable/oldstable
> (e.g to prevent new stretch users from deploying a deprecated package)?

Laurent's reply was directed only to my self, but pasting it here
for completeness (and ofc with his permission):

| Yes.
| We provide (even for version 3.5.5 and 4.0.2) a package out of debian that
| can give user a better experience than the embedded package, because we can
| embed all external lib we need, in the version we need. So you can make a
| removal request of 3.5.5 and 4.0.2

Cheers,
        Moritz

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