On Fri, 15 May 2009 18:07:32 +0200 Francesco Namuri <francesco@namuri.it> wrote: > > Once configure.in is modified, the configure script needs to be > > regenerated. That can cause problems with packages that haven't had an > > upstream release in a while. > > > > This is a rather worrying snippet: > > dnl If using the system's GLIB library, setup > > dnl will exclude the included GLIB > > > > included copy of GLIB 1.2 ??? > > > > I know it's only a single small file but still, is there an upstream > > for pmidi? > > the last version of pmidi (1.6.0) has been released in December 2003, > after this no more official relases. To solve this problem can I > repackage the source removing these two files? No, not worth it. Just put a note in debian/copyright that these two files are ignored by the build and are a legacy of upstream being abandoned. > > Also, most packages look up the path to pkg-config and use that > > variable. It is a more portable method. > > > > > CFLAGS="$CFLAGS `pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0`" > > > LIBS="$LIBS `pkg-config --libs glib-2.0`" > > > > That overrides those variables. More common practice is to append but > > if the package uses no others, it should be OK. > > > > > WITH_INCLUDED_GLIB=0 > > > AC_SUBST(GLIBCNF) > > > fi > > > > > > > > > Is it a good solution, or it's a bad workaround? > > > > It's probably only a partial solution. You'll need to be sure that > > other things haven't changed as a result and you'll need to see what > > other effects re-running the autotools may cause. (autoreconf -f). > > You'll almost certainly have a bloated .diff.gz. > > Yes, the .diff.gz, contais all the autotools regenerated files... Unless you take over upstream, that is probably likely to remain a problem. Not only that but this problem is likely to get worse and worse as time goes on. Once a package as abandoned as this starts needing tweaks to the autotools, things can get out of hand. pmidi is quite a simple package but that also means that it would be fairly trivial to revitalise upstream by creating a new upstream home. You could use alioth. If you don't fancy becoming upstream, maybe the package should just be removed along with glib-1.2. > > What patch system are you proposing to use to implement this change to > > configure.in ? > > I have not considered this issue, maybe simple path system? But I don't > know if another patch system can offer enhancements managing a problem > like this one. It's more about how this is going to pan out in the future. Are you intending to maintain pmidi for the foreseeable future or is this a QA upload? -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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