Notes about boot-floppies, slang, and newt

[Junichi Uekawa <dancer@netfort.gr.jp>]

Hi,


There is some confusion regarding the outcome of
slang/newt reorganization, and the resulting boot-floppies 
change.

I have basically created slang, and slang-utf8 which coexist alongside
with each other, and as a result, I have created a slang-dev and 
slang-utf8-dev which conflict with each other.

This is probably too strict, but unless this is deemed really unnecessary
this is the best way to ensure that binaries are compiled 
with the proper compiler flags, and linked with the proper 
library. There were many confusions, segfaults, unkown errors,
and flashing screens due to this problem.

As a result, there is a newt-utf8-dev and newt-dev which exist
conflicting with each other, and whiptail-utf8, which exist
conflicting with whiptail.

I have also located a problem with whiptail-utf8, which was 
missing a call to setlocale, so that we have a whiptail-utf8 
that can actually process utf8 strings. 
Therefore, it should now be possible to create modconf-utf8,
if one desires, and gets through some other necessary hoops.


The current problem people are facing is that 
previously people were building utf8, and nonutf8 version
of binary from one source, linked to nonutf8 binary.
It worked previously, but not any more, because previous
slang library tried to divert the library, which resulted in 
half-a-chance of getting the correct library.
Now it is no longer possible to compile utf8 and nonutf8 
version of the binary from the same source.

The packages that are required by the boot-floppies 
to build were: 

cfdisk-utf8
nano-utf8
whiptail-utf8/newt-utf8
slang-utf8

and they are finally installed in sid.


The boot-floppies build system needs to apply something like in
bug #135162. 

The change in boot-floppies is that previously, in i386,
we had a version of dbootstrap linked against nonutf8 libraries,
and dbootstrap-lc linked against utf8 libraries.

However, this will change to:

when LC is enabled, only dbootstrap-lc is built
when LC is disabled, only dbootstrap is built.


This implies that on the console, when framebuffer is not enabled,
and LC is enabled, boot-floppies dialog boxes will have a
slightly uglier frame. There should probably be a way to solve this
problem.


Anyway, I am hoping that it should lead to a more sane building
environment, and more stable build result, for LC-enabled builds.

regards,
	junichi


-- 
dancer@debian.org : Junichi Uekawa   http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer
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