Bug#1118016: education-astronomy: suggests xtide and xtide-data which are not in unstable

Mike Gabriel <[email protected]> Thu, 13 Nov 2025 08:20:47 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.education
Organization	DAS-NETZWERKTEAM
Message-ID	<20251113082047.Horde.aax21kkfjwvthFj0szyxQsl__27915.8324746945$1763022217$gmane$org@mail.das-netzwerkteam.de>

Hi Carles, hi Frans,

On  Mi 12 Nov 2025 20:59:57 CET, Frans Spiesschaert wrote:

> Hi Carles,
>
> Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
>
> Carles Pina i Estany schreef op ma 13-10-2025 om 21:27 [+0200]:
>>
>> Subject: education-astronomy: suggests xtide and xtide-data which are
>> not in unstable
>> Package: education-astronomy
>> Version: 2.13.4
>> Usertags: package-relations package-relations-suggests
>> Severity: wishlist
>>
>> Dear maintainer,
>>
>> I see that the package education-astronomy (version 2.13.4) suggests
>> xtide and xtide-data which are not in unstable.
>>
>> This can be seen in
>> https://packages.debian.org/unstable/education-astronomy . Search for
>> "Package not available".
>>
>> The missing packages used to be in Debian but they were removed some
>> time ago:
>>
>> - https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xtide
>> - https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xtide-data
>>
>> Should they be dropped or changed?
>
> Indeed, xtide and xtide-data were removed from debian because they were
> no longer maintained, though they still are maintained upstream.
> As far as I know there is no alternative available in Debian, so I will
> remove them from Suggests in debian-edu.

Please wait! In Debian blends (which Debian Edu is one variant of,  
esp. the education-*-* packages), the Suggests: field is  
programmatically used for software that is not available in Debian  
testing. This could imply that the software is not in Debian, but we  
could reintroduce it at some later point in time.

So, I'd actually vote for ignoring the Suggests: field in  
education-*-* packages and leave the packages in there. In fact, I am  
currently involved in a packaging project where we might bring more  
Edu software (back) into Debian. If xtide has returned, we simply need  
to update debian-edu src:pkg and xtide jumps back into the Recommends:  
field.

What do you think?

Mike

-- 

mike gabriel aka sunweaver (Debian Developer)
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