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Re: python-gdk-imlib and Delinquent Maintainers



Hi Eric, 

On Mon, Nov 06, 2000 at 07:32:35PM -0500, Eric Gillespie, Jr. wrote:
> There has been a problem in Debian's python-gdk-imlib package for
> quite some time: Transparent PNGs do not display properly (see
> attached example script). According to upstream

When I got that report I tried it on my system and it worked fine. 
Later I upgraded to Helixcode Gnome and found out it's broken there.
As I stayed with Helix for a while I can not say currently if woody
is broken but I did not get a new report afair.

> the proper solution is either to have Python use RTLD_GLOBAL in
> dlopen calls when loading extension modules, or to use an older
> version of libtool to have imlib link directly to gdk-imlib.

The real problem is that some library does not correctly declare 
it's dependencies on other libraries (I do not remember which one
it was) but relies on the calling application to be linked against
those libraries anyway. That library is at fault because nothing 
guarantees that an application using, say, libgtk will link with
libpng. That will break as soon as another image format is supported
like, say, MNG.

> Neither alternative sounds attractive to me, but not having
> transparent PNGs in python-gdk-imlib is pretty bad. FWIW, Red Hat
> uses the RTLD_GLOBAL solution.

I know. But we should do it right, no?

> The second part of the subject comes from the fact that the
> python-gdk-imlib maintainer doesn't seem to be maintaining his
> package very well. There are two very ancient and easy-to-fix
> bugs against it. One

Right. There are. And you could have pointed that out in private mail. 
I am currently quiet busy with real life and therefore I don't have the time 
to read all the list email currently. But I check my personal mail 
at least twice a day and try to be responsive. 

> (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=59231&repeatmerged=yes)
> is just a few simple typos! Another
> (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=64583&repeatmerged=yes)
> is just a simple chmod.

I fixed those bugs - they are just too easy. But it seems my package 
did not make it to the archive for some reason. Perhaps I forgot to 
upload them, I was working as an intern in a Linux company at that time. 
Of course the local copy was on my workstation over there and the 
data of that machine is long gone.

> Fixed versions are available at
> (http://www.indy.progeny.com/~epg/python-gnome/).

Thanks. I would like to adopt them for Debian but: Why are that native
packages? There should be an orig.tar.gz and a diff.gz, not just a tar.gz.

I guess I will have to do an upload these days since there is still that
grave bug on python-gnome, and I agree it is grave...

Thanks for your help

	Torsten



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