Hi Neil,
Thanks for the prompt reply. I get impressed when a 5 years old bug gets a fast response. And stills not solved.
If you open the bug report #876197 and read it carefully and then read this bug report more carefully yet, you will notice that the referred header file isn't part of the final binary.
And it surprises me to hear that a simple binary, based on 2 header files, 11 C files and a single Makefile, can be so complex that maintenance as a debian package becomes unbearable.
If you also read carefully the other mails in this bug, you will notice the package was indeed removed by a misleading and wrong assumption from the developer (or would better say packager since not even looking at the source code was done?). Which makes it really strange. You as debian developers (or maybe just packagers?) are expected to have a high quality knowledge about packages, mainly to take a final decision to completely remove them. Now you come back to me saying you have the power to remove the package based on a mistaken decision but you don't have the will to fix it. Don't you think it is, at the least, odd?
BTW now on do we need to keep track of all DDs thoughts and keep acting upon their mindset about what they consider not useful anymore?
Before you ask me why not maintain the package myself, I already created my own deb package and have it working fine here. My intention was to stop all the bad decisions that came after this wrongly removal, which affected several packages that relied on mpage. The idea was just to fix one mistake made by a DD instead of forcing several other DDs to change their packages and remove a supported software.
After 5 years I'm not so sure if my idea to help Debian succeed as intended.
And that was just one quick check I made. I'm afraid to find more of this if I keep looking.