Hi Hugh, On Mon, Feb 05, 2018 at 11:53:50AM +0000, Hugh McMaster wrote: > On Friday, 2 February 2018 11:14 PM, Simon McVittie wrote: > > On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 at 11:07:42 +0000, Hugh McMaster wrote: > >> Freetype-config has been considered deprecated for several years [1]. > > By us, or by upstream? > Both. We considered freetype-config a deprecated legacy interface back in > 2011 [1]. Upstream also recommend using pkg-config over freetype-config > in freetype-config(1). In fact, freetype-config has used pkg-config as a > wrapper since February 2017 [2]. > > Does Freetype's upstream developer consider AC_CHECK_FT2 to be deprecated > > too? > Not as far as I can tell. That said, I'm not against patching the m4 macro to > use PKG_CHECK_MODULES if you believe it will be useful. Since Freetype upstream has not formally deprecated AC_CHECK_FT2, it's a hard sell to make a number of Debian packages instantly RC-buggy by making a Debian-specific change to drop this interface. I believe that making AC_CHECK_FT2 a wrapper around PKG_CHECK_MODULES is the prudent path forward, which should also be upstreamable to Freetype (since, as you say, the macro currently wraps a command that they consider deprecated). > > If we ask the upstream developers of various packages to make a change > > because otherwise their package won't compile on Debian, some of them > > will say "well, that's Debian's fault for removing APIs provided by > > Freetype's upstream developer" and do nothing. If we ask them to make a > > change because Freetype upstream has officially deprecated the macro/tool > > they're using, or because otherwise their package (eventually) won't > > compile against newer upstream Freetype releases, it seems more likely > > to happen. > > Not carrying long-term patches to the build systems of a large number of > > packages seems a good goal. > Good point. I'll file a bug upstream to ask them to drop freetype-config. > In the meantime, I'll do the mass bug filing for Debian. Thanks, -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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