[pkg-php-pear] Bug#883386: Bug#883386: php-apigen depends on php-symfony-* (< 3~~) but 3.4.0+dfsg-1 is to be installed

[Florian Schlichting]

Hello php packagers,

On Sun, Dec 03, 2017 at 02:05:10PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> Package: php-apigen
> Version: 4.1.2-2
> Severity: serious
> Tags: buster sid
> 
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>  php-apigen : Depends: php-symfony-options-resolver (< 3~~) but 3.4.0+dfsg-1 is to be installed
>               Depends: php-symfony-console (< 3~~) but 3.4.0+dfsg-1 is to be installed
>               Depends: php-symfony-yaml (< 3~~) but 3.4.0+dfsg-1 is to be installed

I'm thinking about dropping php-apigen and the packages it depends on,
namely php-apigen-theme-default, php-apigen-theme-bootstrap, php-fshl,
php-kdyby-events, php-markdown, php-nette and php-tokenreflection. The
only reverse-(build)-dependencies in Debian are awl and davical, which I
maintain.

When I joined pkg-php-pear to maintain these packages, I didn't know of
any other tools available in Debian that could build API docs for
davical, but I have been experimenting with phpDox and doxygen since and
I think they'll be good enough for my needs.

Apigen on the other hand has been struggling to push out a new release.
After a long quiet period there was frantic activity from a new
maintainer, which resulted in several release candidates being tagged
over the summer. However he has since explained that he burned out,
development is again very slow, and serious issues have surfaced
(crashes, massive performance regression compared to 4.1.2 - see
https://www.tomasvotruba.cz/blog/2017/09/04/how-apigen-survived-its-own-death/
for the whole story). There doesn't appear to be anybody working to
address these issues.

All the while symfony got updated, and apigen 4.1.2 fails to work with
current symfony in obscure ways (exception in eval'd / generated
code)...

Perhaps apigen and friends should have been removed from Debian two
years ago, as David had suggested. Unless anybody objects, that's
probably what I'm going to request in a few weeks. Any thoughts?

Florian