Re: Bug#379938: Crashes with libnewt0.52 (0.52.2-5.1) if libfribidi0 not installed

[Alastair McKinstry <mckinstry@computer.org>]

Christian Perrier wrote:
> Quoting Andree Leidenfrost (andree@debian.org):
>   
>> Package: libnewt0.52
>> Version: 0.52.2-5.1
>> Severity: important
>>
>> Dear Alistair,
>>
>> In version 0.52.2-5.1, the crashes in case libfribidi0 is not installed 
>> have returned. I am attaching a full backtrace of a non-stripped program 
>> (mondoarchive) using a non-stripped libnewt0.52 (0.52.2-5.1).
>>
>> I believe this is really the same as #351367 and #290722.
>>
>> 0.52.2-5 is fine, the problem only starts with 0.52.2-5.1. Also as 
>> before, if libfribidi0 is installed, the problem goes away.
>>
>> I presume the underlying reason is (from the changelog):
>>
>> [...]
>> * Apply patch from Eugeniy Meshcheryako to regenerate configure during build
>>   so that bidi support is enabled again. Closes: #379566
>> [...]
>>
>> Please let me know if you need any other information.
>>     
>
>
> Please note that this latter change was needed by D-I, so any solution
> reverting that change is not acceptable.
>
> I guess that a short-term solution would be making libnewt0.52 depend
> on libfribidi0....but that'd virtually make the latter part of the
> base system.
>
>
>   
The NMU patch puts the fribidi code back into Newt; unfortunately thats
not where it
belongs: it somehow got dropped from libslang2. It was moved from newt
to slang
(the underlying library on which newt is based) in 2004; I need to do
some work to
figure out whats happened.

Working on this as quickly as possible,
Alastair