Am Sun, 07 Nov 2010 23:50:22 +0100 schrieb Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de>:
Let's not rush things:
* Make sure that dcron is really a dead project and there is no chance for an update. Dropping a core package just because of one bug (which might get fixed) does not sound sane.
See the both URLs Florian has given: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/18681 Bug report opened: 14 March 2010 First comment from upstream dev, Jim Pryor: 14 April 2010 Last comment from upstream dev: 22 September 2010 http://repo.or.cz/w/dcron.git Latest change: 3 Feb 2010 Maybe someone should contact Jim first and ask him, if he still maintains dcron and if he will fix this bug.
* The crontab from dcron and fcron are not compatible. So fcron cannot be a simple drop-in repalcement
What are the differences? I didn't need to change anything when I switched from fcron to the new dcron. If I had to change a bit it was so easy, that I can't remember anymore. The only thing which has changed was the command to edit the crontab. It's crontab for dcron and fcrontab for fcron. But for such changes an announcement can be written in the News section of the website, in the mailing list and in the package's post_install(). See the latest xorg upgrade. And Florian's suggestion was not about removing dcron from the repos, but only to change the default cron daemon, which is installed without the user's interaction during installation, from dcron to fcron. So only new installations would be affected by this change anyway.
* Some users might prefer dcron; simply replacing it is just not how we roll. People are free to install fcron if they like.
I personally haven't seen big differences between fcron and dcron from the administrator's point of view. Heiko