Comment 21 for bug 1636666

> I did some quick searches to assess the state of upstream PCRE2
> support in the packages listed on Jeremy’s tracker.

thanks for pointing that out. I didn't check myself, but how many of these packages are already using pcre2 in Debian?

> So it seems unlikely that sticking our head in the sand will
> keep PCRE2 out of main for very long even if we wanted that.

I don't think that this is an accurate description. Your trackers are a step forward, however a PPA with using pcre2 would give more confidence that we don't get stuck in the middle of a transition.

Also the package seems to be behind 18 months behind with releases compared to upstream, and we don't have the packaging issue resolved yet in https://bugs.debian.org/862425. All this doesn't sound very promising to only have to maintain one pcre version in 18.04. Please can we start with a PPA to see if we can accomplish this transition in time for bionic?