This makes the code not acceptable in Debian.
I’m also very much against of packaging an obsolete and buggy old
version of the code when we already have the new one in Debian.
I am assuming that Andrej is speaking for the Debian Java team here in which case I must respect his wishes on this. Would it be possible for us to get a Hangout together with Andrej (and any other required Debian Java team members) and whoever at Google is in a decision-making position about which version of diffutils are being used? Maybe if we get everyone together we can figure out a reasonable way forward that will work for everyone.
At worst, we can implement a possible Bazel patch from Andrej just in Debian. That would resolve this issue by allowing us to use the newer library that is already in Debian but I prefer not deviating from upstream if we don't have to... It seems like we should be able to come to a consensus solution here if we can get the right people to have a conversation.
-Olek