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Re: base-config, kbd and console-tools



Am Aoine, 2004-02-27 ag 06:52, scríobh Denis Barbier:
> Hi,
> 
> is there any reason why base-config depends on console-tools instead
> of "console-tools | console-utilities"?

Should work, but I'm not sure of the advantage: base-config almost
always just gets run at installation, so console-tools will be chosen. 

> It is not clear for me whether console-tools or kbd should be used;
> the former seems to be unmaintained upstream but have an active
> Debian maintainer, whereas this seems to be the opposite for kbd.
> In a recent (01/2004) thread on the linux-utf8 ML (currently offline, so
> no pointer, but Google should find its cached version) about problems
> with UTF-8 and console, kbd upstream advised to throw console-tools away
> and install the newest kbd.
> Does someone have some experience on this topic?
> 
Ok, A summary of status and plans:

The reasons console-(tools|data) still exist are:
(1) A number of developers have threatened/promised to restart work
"post sarge". (*)
(2) Until recently at least, kbd was unmaintained within debian, and had
less integration: console-tools, etc using debconf.

Recently, Wartan has packaged more recent versions o kbd; I'd need to
investigate its debianisation to check if (3) is still true. I have been
reluctant to get involved in the kbd package as I feel a degree of
redundancy on such an essential package is useful. 

Andries Brouwer, the kbd developer, is cordial to re-merging the
packages; so I've been working with the plan of making the diffs between
console-(tools|data) easily mergable back to kbd. console-(tools|data)
now use dbs, so patches are maintained individually, to make this easy.
I intend to do another "major release" of console-(tools|data) soom
which just merges the common patches (common to both console* and kbd)
back to the "mainline", keeping just debian-specific stuff as seperate
patches, feeding patches back to Andries.
I raid each kbd release for new changes and merge them into console-* ;
I have yet to do so for kbd-1.12, which has some 2.6 kernel fixes, I
believe.

* Planned (post-sarge) upcoming changes to console-tools include using X
keyboard maps, so we have a more consistent, comprehensive keyboard map
set. 
We should be able to use the libxbfile library to do this.
( Especially with a change like this, I feel it important to keep kbd
seperate as a backup while such a merge takes place, so if we f*ck
things up, people have something else to use)


> Denis
-- 
Slán agus Beannacht,
Alastair

Alastair McKinstry <mckinstry@debian.org>
GPG Key fingerprint (New) = CD45 260A 4546 C3C0 F595  F0F6 4132 BF90 2A38 5C57
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that
will reach to himself.

- --Thomas Paine



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