Bug#722980: Status of ruby1.8 removal transition?

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Antonio Terceiro <terceiro@debian.org> writes:

> Ruby packages must depend on `ruby | ruby-interpreter`. the `Provides:
> ruby-interpreter` was just dropped from ruby1.8, so it won't satisfy
> that dependency anymore, which will cause any packages that need a Ruby
> interpreter to either pull in `ruby` (the default Ruby) or any other
> interpreter already installed.

Ah, okay, I missed that part.  I gather that changed at some point in the
past?  ruby-remctl has never depended on ruby | ruby-interpreter, and I'm
pretty sure I fully implemented the policy that was available at the time.
I'll add that going forward.

> ruby1.8 is not the default Ruby in wheezy already, so people using `just
> ruby` should actually already be using ruby1.9.1. In the case of users
> how made an explicit choice to use ruby1.8 (because they didn't or
> couldn't upgrade their inhouse code to a newer Ruby version), I don't
> think there's much we can do about it.

Okay, thanks.

That opens up the possibility of an unpleasant upgrade experience for
ruby-remctl in particular, but it sounds like it's not a general problem.
That package is not very widely used, so unless someone has a neat
solution, I'm inclined to not worry about it.  (It doesn't feel like it
warrants a stable update.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>