Comment 3 for bug 2018100

IMHO there is not much advantage to having php-defaults syncable, and indeed there is a side-effect to having it in a sync state: At the start of a new Ubuntu cycle when the archive opens up, php-defaults will automatically sync in whatever version's current in Debian, resulting us starting a PHP transition immediately, whether we plan to or not.

For this reason, I see little harm in keeping whatever miscellaneous delta we want on php-defaults, and just do merges (your option #1).

As to what to do with php-facedetect, of course it could be fixed, dropped temporarily, or dropped permanently and blacklisted. Offhand the two bugs linked don't look fundamentally unfixable, so I'd lean towards just fixing it if possible. Presumably the package is useful to our users given that a couple bothered to file bug reports about it. ;-)