The last piece is rather simple to answer: pcre can be removed when
there is no consumer left.

This means either consumers are fixed/moved to pcre2 or the consumers
are removed

That assumes active and responsive maintainers for all, we'll wait and see.

In any case, you can already file a delete request and have the bots
report issues it sees that stops it from removing the package
(installcheck will block the removal until it's safe)

Already in https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/1254255

Some patterns: A number of packages needlessly pull in pcre-devel without using it - that's why I had a much lower number of packages actually linking to the library. A set would support pcre2 but only when asked. The zsh change will drop a hole bunch.

Good night,

Andreas