The HAM changes are needed to give users a GUI where they can pick alternatives. It's NOT needed for proper packaging. Never been.

I heard arguments like "we won't package in a correct way since some GUI in HAM is missing to use the additional options this would provide" (ignoring that all users still could use apt to use the additional options)
and even "we won't contribute any more when our packages are not forced onto all users via HAM/MP" (The latter explicitly stated, claiming that devels "have a right that all users use their package when those devels bother to provide such awesome piece of software"). I think this pretty much explains why I'm not very polite on the whole topic anymore.

And again: Sticking with old broken MP way of packaging for new alternative packages IS forcing them onto all users of CSSU, since no user has the knowledge to handle a system where the new package got replaced by the old one. Actually there IS no proper way to handle such a system (except maybe by building your own private MP and replacing the mp-community-pr by it).



How to proceed? See point a) in my prev post (remove package from MP), which already is accomplishing 90% of the "fixing the issue" that's needed. Then deal with the remaining 10% which are "how do you nevertheless make sure all users get the package (update) on next CSSU release?". For the latter I suggested a simple postinstall-script-only package that uses apt directly to update the new package when it actually already got installed, and otherwise maybe asks user "do you want to install new package XYZ?" when it never been installed yet. I'm sure you guys are smart enough to figure some shell 10-liner to accomplish sth like that. The only relevant point is: user must have a choice to keep the old Nokia package if she wants.

[edit] A very low effort (and almost silly) approach would be: make a NEW mp-community-pr-all-addons and simply move the new packages from old mp-community-pr to the new *-all-addons. Do NOT include the new *-all-addons MP to the original mp-community-pr, but rather allow users to opt-in (or even opt-out) by simply installing/removing the mp-community-pr-all-addons metapackage. All users that have such package installed will continue to get all the alternative FOSS new packages, while those few users who don't want (some of) the new FOSS stuff simply will uninstall the *-all-addons and are free to install an arbitrary selection of CSSU FOSS addon stuff manually then. A careful manual apt-get upgrade will still get them all the updates on those addon packages, while the stripped mp-community-pr will pull in the updates and new *mandatory* packages on all further CSSU releases as usual.

/j