Comment 6 for bug 887344

Thanks for the review, Doko. A few comments...

 1) The tmux package does ship a set of keybindings that duplicate screen's, and makes it behave a bit more like screen. These are installed in /usr/share/doc/tmux/examples/screen-keys.conf. Note that Byobu necessarily sources those by default, when launching in tmux mode. We could, perhaps, create a tmux-screen-compat binary package, that gets installed under certain dependency/recommendation/conditions.

 2) As a packager/maintainer who has extensive experience with the screen package, I disagree with your first point. The stack of patches in screen does make it very difficult to maintain, as well as the fact that upstream screen hasn't released in 5+ years. Here's a current listing:

-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.3K 2011-12-02 09:33 00list
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 746 2011-12-02 09:33 01configure_fix_alpha_vsprintf.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 140K 2011-12-02 09:33 01CVS.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.3K 2011-12-02 09:33 02configure_use_ncursesw.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 796 2011-12-02 09:33 03fully_expand_screenencodings.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 337K 2011-12-02 09:33 04AUTOCONF.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 649 2011-12-02 09:33 05fix_osdef_include.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 2.6K 2011-12-02 09:33 09CHERRY_45d0c395.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.3K 2011-12-02 09:33 09CHERRY_7cb17d54.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 3.3K 2011-12-02 09:33 09CHERRY_97708d58.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.8K 2011-12-02 09:33 09CHERRY_bb04008e.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 800 2011-12-02 09:33 09CHERRY_f6b50e17.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.7K 2011-12-02 09:33 10norootpassword.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 7.5K 2011-12-02 09:33 11replace_doc_paths.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 868 2011-12-02 09:33 12kfreebsd_ctty.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 722 2011-12-02 09:33 13split_info_files.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 2.5K 2011-12-02 09:33 14size_matters.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 906 2011-12-02 09:33 15manpage_typos.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.8K 2011-12-02 09:33 16fix_gcc_warnings.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 6.2K 2011-12-02 09:33 16fix_gcc_warnings_II.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 2.0K 2011-12-02 09:33 17manpage_sessionname_warning.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 3.0K 2011-12-02 09:33 18manpage_maxwin_limit.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 2.2K 2011-12-02 09:33 19flowcontrol_lockup.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 885 2011-12-02 09:33 20defmonitor.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.4K 2011-12-02 09:33 21manpage_nethack_activation.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 957 2011-12-02 09:33 22exchange_file_mode.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 920 2011-12-02 09:33 23exitcode_q_ls.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 631 2011-12-02 09:33 24option_parser.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 792 2011-12-02 09:33 25allow_symlink_sockdir.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 17K 2011-12-02 09:33 26source_encoding.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.8K 2011-12-02 09:33 27doc_sty_noenvpassing.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1009 2011-12-02 09:33 28blankerprg_callsemantics.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 512 2011-12-02 09:33 29infodoc_version.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1009 2011-12-02 09:33 30fix_fsf_address.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 968 2011-12-02 09:33 31upstream_cherries.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 560 2011-12-02 09:33 32misc_minor_fixes.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 846 2011-12-02 09:33 33increase_max_winmsg_renditions.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 760 2011-12-02 09:33 35screen_invoked_with_a_command.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 4.3K 2011-12-02 09:33 40cjk_eastasian.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 434 2011-12-02 09:33 45suppress_remap.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 3.3K 2011-12-02 09:33 50EXP_tilde_expansion.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 9.4K 2011-12-02 09:33 51EXP_session_creation_time.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 831 2011-12-02 09:33 56-source-file-not-found-warning.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.1K 2011-12-02 09:33 58-show-encoding-hardstatus.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 875 2011-12-02 09:33 59-no-beep-on-write-acl.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 840 2011-12-02 09:33 60-byobu-pointer.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.7K 2011-12-02 09:33 61-silence_command_from_echo.dpatch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kirkland kirkland 1.2K 2011-12-02 09:33 62-fix-term-length.dpatch

Diffstat says:
 74 files changed, 7183 insertions(+), 4063 deletions(-)

 3) As for the demotion of screen to universe, I'd be in favor of that (again, as a maintainer of the screen package in Ubuntu). However, I'd hope that that is not a *strict* prerequisite for demoting screen. We do have many examples of similar tools in main (git/bzr/cvs/subversion, emacs/vim, curl/wget, cpio/tar, etc.). So while Screen perhaps could/should be moved to Universe, there will be many users who complain about that. Thus, I'd like to focus this MIR on the promotion of tmux, and then pursue the demotion of screen thereafter, if that's a reasonable position. I agree that from a user's point of view the change is not transparent. And old-school users of screen are not particularly keen on change (in my experience). From this point of view, I think demoting screen could be a very bad idea. I think it might be more reasonable to offer support for tmux in addition to screen (like we do with git/bzr/cvs/subversion, emacs/vim, curl/wget, cpio/tar, etc.).