Bug#977321: O: autoconf2.13 -- automatic configure script builder (obsolete version)

[Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>]

Hi Ben,

Ben Pfaff wrote:
> This package is really obsolete.  It has several bug reports but the
> right thing to do is probably to get any packages that use autoconf2.13
> updated to use something else.  (Or removed; they are antiques
> themselves.)

While I hoped that you are right, there seem at least two big blockers
on a first glance: Firefox and Thunderbird.

I tried to make a quick list of affected packages:

→ grep-dctrl -s Package -FBuild-Depends,Build-Depends-Indep,Build-Depends-Arch autoconf2.13 /var/lib/apt/lists/*Source* | fgrep Package | sort -u
Package: firefox
Package: firefox-esr
Package: gcc-3.3
Package: gcc-m68hc1x
Package: grass
Package: maxima
Package: mozjs52
Package: mozjs78
Package: postgis
Package: thunderbird
Package: vflib3
Package: xemacs21

And yeah, some packages in this list are really old. gcc-3.3 recently
has been orphaned for similar reasons: https://bugs.debian.org/966317

So I tried to figure out which versions of Firefox and Thunderbird
exactly are affected and it started to look less bad:

→ apt-cache showsrc firefox firefox-esr thunderbird | egrep 'Package:|autoconf|Version:|^$' | sed -e 's/autoconf2\.13.*/autoconf2\.13, …/g'
Package: firefox
Version: 81.0-2
Build-Depends: autotools-dev, debhelper (>= 9.20160114), autoconf2.13, …
Standards-Version: 3.9.8.0

Package: firefox
Version: 82.0.3-1
Standards-Version: 3.9.8.0

Package: firefox
Version: 83.0-1
Standards-Version: 3.9.8.0

Package: firefox
Version: 84.0-1
Standards-Version: 3.9.8.0

Package: firefox-esr
Version: 78.5.0esr-1
Build-Depends: autotools-dev, debhelper (>= 9.20160114), autoconf2.13, …
Standards-Version: 3.9.8.0

Package: firefox-esr
Version: 78.6.0esr-1
Build-Depends: autotools-dev, debhelper (>= 9.20160114), autoconf2.13, …
Standards-Version: 3.9.8.0

Package: thunderbird
Version: 1:78.5.1-1
Build-Depends: autoconf2.13, …
Standards-Version: 4.5.1

Package: thunderbird
Version: 1:78.6.0-1
Build-Depends: autoconf2.13, …
Standards-Version: 4.5.1

Package: thunderbird
Version: 1:84.0~b3-1
Build-Depends: autoconf2.13, …
Standards-Version: 4.5.1

So while the current Firefox-ESR and Thunderbird are affected, the
Firefox from version 82 onwards seem to no more be affected. (The list
contains versions from Unstable, Experimental and Testing.)

But then again Thunderbird 84 still is using autoconf2.13. So
hopefully the latter can be fixed by just replacing the
build-dependency and maybe some minor other tweaks.

So in the end, removing autoconf2.13 doesn't look too hard, but still
might need some time and work.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
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