rng-tools: should become a transitional package, like in Debian, but to rng-tools5
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rng-tools (Ubuntu) |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
| rng-tools5 (Ubuntu) |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
In Debian, I just made rng-tools a transitional package to fix the bad situation between rng-tools, rng-tools-debian and rng-tools5: https:/
It is clear that, past the next release (that is, in bookworm) there will be only rng-tools-debian (2.x) and rng-tools5 (6.x at least, by then). Ubuntu should track both rng-tools-debian and rng-tools5 from Debian. I’ll remove rng-tools between bullseye and bookworm (and Ubuntu currently does not track rng-tools from Debian anyway).
The rng-tools package itself is more tricky. It is what users coming from older releases will have installed. In Debian, it always was version 2.x, so I transitioned it to rng-tools-debian. In Ubuntu, however, rng-tools 5.x was shipped for multiple releases, so it should become a transitional package towards there, and eventually (after the next LTS released with that change) entirely removed. Anything of worth currently in Ubuntu’s version of rng-tools should be forwarded to Debian’s rng-tools5 package and merged there, so it can be just Sync’d into Ubuntu.
| Thorsten Glaser (mirabilos) wrote | #1 |
| Thorsten Glaser (mirabilos) wrote | #2 |
Background on why rng-tools-debian exists: https:/
Basically, Debian carried massive delta against upstream for years which was never merged but which is so crucial many users rely on it, and upstream’s version comes nowhere near its functionality. If one doesn’t need these features (or has a modern/high-bitrate HWRNG) one’s better with upstream’s 5.x/6.x version, otherwise one must use rng-tools-debian instead. This “castling move” was recommended to me in that bugreport linked.
tl;dr: Yes, we do need both.