Binary packages of superseded packages are in main archive and PPAs

[Eugene San]

There seems to be a problem with binary packages indexing/cleanup mechanism.

All Trust and Xenial are affected and probably the rest of releases.
The issue is correct for both main archive and PPAs.

Till now I've found only two examples but I am afraid the issue is wide spread.

Example#1 (Main archive):
------------
Package: dcmtk
Source: 3.6.1~20150924-4
Binaries: 3.6.1~20150924-5 and 3.6.0-15.1
Result: aeskulap FTBFS since they both provide libdcmtk2-dev and the older one is incompatible. As result the package was mistakenly removed from archive while it is perfectly fine.

Example#2 (PPA):
------------
Package: xf86-input-cmt (https://launchpad.net/~eugenesan/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+sourcepub/6039767/+listing-archive-extra)
Source: 2.0.6-13ubuntu2~eugenesan~xenial4
Binaries: 2.0.6-13ubuntu2~eugenesan~xenial4 and 2.0.6-13ubuntu2~eugenesan~trusty3
Result: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics-lts-vivid is available in the archive while no longer provided by latest source.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

In the primary archive, these "NBS" (not-built-from-source) binaries are only removed by hand when they don't have any remaining reverse-dependencies, to avoid unnecessary breakage. This is intentional. I've restored aeskulap, though.

I think similar considerations about avoiding reverse-dependency breakage may apply to PPAs, though I'm not sure. William may remember more here.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Not related to qa-regression-testing, so invalidating that task.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Incidentally it's at least possible to clean up NBS binaries in PPAs using the "remove-package" tool from lp:ubuntu-archive-tools; you want at least the -A and -b options.

[Eugene San (eugenesan)]

I see now.
Thanks for the explanation.