[Pkg-bitcoin-devel] Bug#797683: bitcoin-tx should be a separate package

[Zak Wilcox]

Source: bitcoin
Version: 0.11.0-1

Since 0.10.1-2 Debian's bitcoind binary package includes the bitcoin-tx
binary, introduced upstream in 0.10.0.  It should have its own package.

A user isn't likely to need both bitcoind/bitcoin-cli and bitcoin-tx on
one machine; if you have bitcoin-cli you can use the rawtransaction API,
including letting bitcoin-cli handle signing/wallet bits so that you
don't have to provide raw private keys.  The user may want to actively
avoid bitcoind/bitcoin-cli; the main use case for bitcoin-tx is TX
creation/signing on disconnected hosts, where the extra binaries and
dependencies introduce redundant code into a context where you probably
want the minimum possible.

The PPA for Ubuntu currently doesn't include bitcoin-tx in any binary
package yet [1].  Nor does Arch.  Gentoo puts it in a separate package
[2].  Cross-distro harmony seems sensible where it doesn't buck normal
distro behaviour.

Upstream trivial issue https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6600 is
just-bundle-with-bitcoind-like-Debian but met some objections; getting
it split everywhere is probably better.

[1]
<https://launchpadlibrarian.net/211658943/buildlog_ubuntu-vivid-amd64.bitcoin_0.11.0-vivid1_BUILDING.txt.gz>
(look for "This package provides the daemon")
[2] https://packages.gentoo.org/package/dev-util/bitcoin-tx