Re: Bug#127252: -unstable compiled against the wrong libpng
I use debain. As a debian user I am quite distressed at how this
bug is being treated. I have watched the bug reports on this issue
and have created one (See 127215). From my perspective the problem
seems to be the libpng3 changes the dependencies of qt2 and hense kde.
It seems the fix is not to revert/fix libpng but to fix the qt
dependencies however I get the impression that frustration is setting
in. ie. did not create the bug so I should not fix it. From a user
POV this is scary. With something as complex as debain or even just
the kde tree this type of bug should be expected and _fixed_ quickly
even if the person repairing the bug is doing damage control.
Once the bug is _fixed_ then the developers can and should improve
processes to make this sort of problem less apt to occur.
I would not consider it a bug if qt2 had failed to upgrade until all
dependent apps had recompiled packages available - my system would
not have broken... This would have also put pressure on package
owers to recompile. As it stands now there seems to be little incentive
to recompile. Look at 127215 - its closed but nothing is fixed.
Ed Tomlinson
Mark Purcell wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 01, 2002 at 06:50:03PM +0900, Junichi Uekawa wrote:
>> On Tue, 1 Jan 2002 19:39:07 +1100 Mark Purcell <msp@debian.org> wrote:
>>
>> > The solution is rather simple, requiring recompilation to
>> > get the correct linkage to libpng3, but it would of been nice to
>> > see some dicussion on debian-devel before the upload of
>> > libpng3 to unstable 'broke' all our pacakges.
>>
>> Do you call that solution pretty simple?
>
> Well it is simple once you know about it. I have two complaints as
> a maintainer of a couple of libpng dependant packages.
>
> 1. Why hasn't there been any discussion on debian-devel to actually
> let maintainers know that there is this major backwards incompatibility
> issue,
> which is going to create all sorts of user problems. The only reports I
> have seen sofar are Bug#126808 and Bug#126904. Have a look in debian-kde
> 'where have my icons gone threads' to guage the amount of confusion this
> issue is causing.
>
> 2. What measures are in place to prevent such a monster change
> as caused by the uncontrolled introduction of libpng3??
>
> This is a big issue, I'm stll suprised there has been zero discussion
> about this and the implications for developers of libpng dependant
> packages.
>
>> We have around 300+ packages depending on libpng2,
>> which amounts to more than 1000 rebuilds.
>> And we don't have the incompatibility information in
>> our dependency system, which means that it will fail to trickle
>> into "testing".
>
> The incompatibility as I see it from here is that any application
> which depends on libpng2, is only good with libpng2 <= 1.0.12-2 and
> upon recompiling will be dependant on libpng3.
>
> libqt 2.3.1-18 has been recompiled and now depends on libpng3, but almost
> every other package needs to be recompiled as well :-(
>
> I understand that Philippe Troin, libpng maintainer, is currently on
> vacation. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about the libpng issues
> could comment as this is only what I have been able to gather from the
> outside looking in.
>
> Mark
>
>
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