Re: [Gnewsense-dev] No xv?

[Richard Stallman]

    > Maybe there should be a "discard package" list
    > and all mentions of those packages should be removed
    > when copying other packages from Debian.

    That means recompiling dozens (hundreds?) of packages for no gain other
    then to remove 10 characters from a meta file.

Why does removing these characters require recompiling anything?
Can't a script patch these meta files without recompiling?

I am not an expert on this, so please forgive me if I am overlooking
something that ought to be obvious.