Re: libXft1 for xorg...
On Tue, Oct 31, 2006 at 11:55:16AM -0600, Jacques Normand wrote:
> During the passage from xfree to xorg, libxft1 has been dropped in favor
> of libXft2. I have no problem with that except that libXft1 is not
> installable anymore (etch system). It depend on the old xfree packages.
> It is a problem since I have a few executables which link to this
> library at runtime, and I only have the executables so no recompilation
> possible. (GaussView but that does not matter). Is there a technical reason
> to have dropped the version 1 of the library?
Yes, it is an obsolete library that's not used by any software in Debian.
>From a security POV, it is always better to *not* ship packages from
obsolete library versions when we can avoid doing so. Even in sarge, the
description of the package said:
This is an older, deprecated version of the Xft library, provided only for
applications that have not yet been updated to use version 2 of the Xft
library.
I'm sorry, but it's not practical for us to support old libraries
indefinitely just for the benefit of a handful of binary-only pieces of
software that we don't distribute (or know anything at all about, really),
and the nature of the xfree86->xorg transition makes it impractical to make
the sarge version of libxft1 installable on etch.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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