Re: Trying to fix slang
On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 06:56:37AM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 12:36:47PM +0100, Jordi Mallach wrote:
> > > Packages using slang, like "jed" should be aware that this
> > > change has happened.
> >
> > You mean they should work correctly without no changes, right?
>
> Previously, you needed to define UTF8 (only) when compiling for
> slang1-utf8; if you didn't (or if the wrong library was installed
> due to the faulty diversion), things silently broke. His change
> enforces this define, and things won't build if it's not set.
>
> I did suggest he remove this requirement altogether, but he seems to
> prefer to leave a half-fix in place, expecting the package maintainer to
> finish it. (Judging by the length of time these RC bugs sat around, this
> probably means it'll never be fixed.)
A bit of history from my point of view (the maintainer)
- Patches were submitted and added to add UTF8 support to slang
- Unfortunately this broke quite a few programs
- The boot-floppy people really wanted a UTF8 version so I seperated
the UTF8 stuff a made a seperate package so they could use that.
(it was supposed to be close to release time so a temporary solution
was needed)
There are many bugs against the utf8 package but I expected that and
didn't have a good answer.
> I don't think this affects anything not already building for
> slang1-utf8; to them, the only change is that the drop-in utf8
> diversion is no longer available.
Essentially what this NMU would do is create a new library. It would
seem to be simpler to just make it completely seperate with no overlap
with the regular slang. Packages that wanted the utf version would
explicitely use it.
libslang.so.1-UTF8 is a terrible soname. Why not just have
libslang-utf8.so.1?
This way packages that can handle utf8 properly can use this library,
and when the regular slang can be fixed properly then can just return
to using that library.
Jim
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