[Bug 2027712] Re: Switch from usrmerge to usr-is-merged

[Christian Ehrhardt ]

FYI Change of the way this shall be tackled.

Per Steves very helpful comment in the MR to the seeds:
"I don't think we want either of these packages in main. They are transitional packages; while the transition is still ongoing in Debian, in Ubuntu the transition completed two LTS cycles ago.

We should just patch init-system-helpers in Ubuntu to drop the
dependency which is no longer needed."


@Foundations
I'm adding a task for init-system-helpers to represent the work for that change.

@CPC
The cloud-image tasks can stay to eventually verify that the image builds (after that change to init-system-helpers) really have neither installed.

** Also affects: init-system-helpers (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2027712

Title:
  Switch from usrmerge to usr-is-merged

Status in cloud-images:
  Confirmed
Status in init-system-helpers package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Last year in Debian we added the 'usr-is-merged' binary package to the
  'usrmerge' source package. Its purpose is to be an empty metapackage
  that simply asserts that the system is usr-merged. This is done via
  the postinst. Contrary to usrmerge, it doesn't ship any additional
  code, perform any additional action or have any additional
  dependencies.

  In Debian, we have an essential package (init-system-helpers) that
  depends on usrmerge | usr-is-merged, so that on upgrade for already
  installed images usrmerge is pulled in and all systems are forcibly
  merged.

  But for new images being built, the boostrap (eg: debootstrap) process
  will instead pull in usr-is-merged, which will save space and reduce
  the overall code footprint.

  The problem in Ubuntu is that while usrmerge is in main, usr-is-merged
  is in universe, so unless the bootstrap tool enables universe for the
  initial bootstrap phase, usrmerge is always pulled in.

  Refs:

  https://packages.ubuntu.com/mantic/usr-is-merged
  https://packages.ubuntu.com/mantic/usrmerge
  https://packages.ubuntu.com/mantic/init-system-helpers

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