Re: Gnomesword, libsword, diatheke, sword modules, bibletime

[Adeodato Simó <adeodato@debian.org>]

Hello,

a person from the Ubuntu community forwarded this mail of yours to a
Debian list.

All these problems you enumerate should be responsibility of the
designated maintainer (Daniel Glassey). You say that you haven't been
successful in contacting him; maybe it's that he has lost interest in
these packages, or doesn't have the time to take care of them anymore,
or perhaps doesn't read his @debian.org mail any more due to spam. I'm
CC'ing him to his latest known address, hoping he can clarify.

I think that if we don't get an answer from him (or if he says he's no
longer interested, doesn't have the time, or would welcome some help) we
should go forward with finding a new maintainer or co-maintainer for
these packages. You expressed interest in bringing your packages into
the Debian archive (which would propagate automatically to Ubuntu):
that'd be great, particularly if you're committed to providing packages
that meet the Debian Policy requirements.

So, let's wait a bit for Daniel's reply, and tell us if you prefer to
try maintaining these packages in Debian yourselves, or would rather
have somebody else do it, if anybody would be interested.

Thanks for contacting us (and thanks Jeffrey Ratcliffe too for
forwarding us your mail).

Oh, and by the way, it would be great if you could submit bug reports
for issues #2 and #4 below, so that they won't be forgotten. (Reports
about out of date versions are not really necessary in this case, since
that's what a new maintainer will address first.)

>> I am one of the developers at CrossWire. Several of our programmes are
>> in your repository, but they are ancient, often 2 or more releases
>> behind us.

>> I have tried on several occasions to contact the maintainer listed but
>> to little avail.

>> I asked eventually on #ubuntu-devel and was advised to mail to you.
>> As we see it, following is wrong:

>> 1) libsword is at 1.5.11 - if you wait a couple of weeks probably at
>> 1.5.12. You keep 1.5.9. 1.5.9 is nearly 2 years old. The functional
>> increase is massive.

>> 2) libsword should be compiled with ICU to allow it full function. It is
>> not.

>> 3) you should not maintain sword modules as all our programmes have a
>> module manager which will download modules directly. Installing modules
>> via apt-get renders the module manager non-functional as the modules are
>> installed by apt-get into non user writable areas (/usr/share/sword
>> instead of ~/.sword)

>> 4) diatheke is a commandline utility which can if carefully handled also
>> be used as a base for CGI script. The example CGI code coming along with
>> it is not meant to be exposed to the internet - at least not in this
>> form. Therefore the dependency on Apache is wrong. Most users will use
>> diatheke only as commandline routine, never as CGI.

>> 5) Gnomesword is ancient history. All bug reports you have on file for
>> GS are sorted in upodated versions. Our last release was 2.4.1. we are
>> currently moving towards the next release - a week or two.

>> There is probably more to it, but to be honest for years now we direct
>> everyone to our own debs as Ubuntu and Debian are so out of date.
>> I would therefore extremely grateful if someone could take this one up
>> or advise us how to go about submitting a new set of packages ourselves.

>> Thanks!

-- 
Adeodato Simó                                     dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer                                  adeodato at debian.org
 
The first step on the road to wisdom is the admission of ignorance. The
second step is realizing that you don't have to blab it to the world.