Re: Why no Opera?
On Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 03:13:59PM -0400, icelinux@icelinux.net wrote:
>> You are also free to properly package it yourself and find a sponsor to
>> upload it for you (assuming you are not already a Debian Developer
>> yourself, which I am guessing you are not).
>
> I do not see the need to do anything other than sign the package and drop
> it into the repository, as it is already completely functional for Debian.
Maybe. Maybe not.
wouter@country:~$ lintian opera_9.23-20070809.3-shared-qt_en_powerpc.deb
W: opera: extra-license-file usr/share/doc/opera/LICENSE.gz
W: opera: extra-license-file usr/share/opera/locale/en/license.txt
W: opera: menu-file-in-usr-lib usr/lib/menu/opera
W: opera: menu-item-uses-apps-section /usr/lib/menu/opera:3
W: opera: menu-item-creates-new-section Apps/Net /usr/lib/menu/opera:3
That's okay-ish for a .deb, seen how it comes from a commercial company.
But when looking at it in slightly more detail, I find some really
weird, ugly and freaky things that lintian does not catch:
- Its postinst generates a desktop file that it drops on some random
place on the hard disk (the exact position depends on whether Gnome,
KDE, or some other Desktop environment is installed; whether some
environment variables are set; and I wouldn't be surprised if the
phase of the moon would have some influence, too). Why it does not
simply ship a .desktop file as part of the package is beyond me. As
part of this, it also has to copy a number of .png files into place.
Neither the .desktop file nor the .png file are then known to dpkg,
which, e.g., breaks diversions.
- The Description field sounds more like a sales pitch than like a
description.
- The debian changelog is less than helpful. These changelogs aren't
just random idioticracy; they help us track down when a particular
issue was introduced, so that we would be able to fix *all* buggy
packages, rather than just those packages that we (perhaps
erroneously) thought were buggy.
- There is something horribly wrong with there dependencies. I did
install it, but then I got this:
ERROR: ld.so: object 'libjvm.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object 'libawt.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
/usr/lib/opera/9.23-20070809.3/opera: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Apparently I'd downloaded the wrong version at first; but with proper
dependencies, dpkg would have rejected the installation of this
package in the first place.
I got bored by then. A package with the above issues should not just be
uploaded to the Debian archive. This is much, much more than just a
"sign and upload" thing.
> I understand this is not the Debian way and I understand that in quite a
> few instances many packages created for Debian by outside parties could
> still have problems. I am reasonably certain that this is not an issue with
> Opera, given the widespread use and the fantastic job they have always done
> packaging their browser for Linux.
Perhaps not everyone is convinced about the quality of Opera.
--
<Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes.
-- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22
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