Re: RFS: xpdf (updated package)
On Sun, 6 Jun 2010 13:24:31 +0200 Jakub Wilk wrote:
> * Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>, 2010-06-06, 14:21:
> >Poppler people are simply completely ignorant wrt to breaking API. If
> >you look into the amount of different patches we had to create for
> >poppler 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 0.10, 0.12 and so on, I am sure this will
> >continue.
> >
> >SO actually I considered to switch back to the embedded xpdf code
> >for Debian texlive packages, just to get rid of that stupid problems:
> >"new poppler hits unstable, changes API at random, so texlive FTBFS"
>
> Worse still, poppler also break ABI without bumping SONAME[1].
> The problem is that interfaces used by software like texlive, cups,
> inkscape or pdf2djvu are considered private by poppler developers[2].
That is may be true upstream, but according to [2] and past experience
the debian maintainers do bump the soname on ABI breakage. So within
debian, this isn't really a problem.
> >I am not sure if basing anything new on poppler is actually a good
> >idea.
>
> No, it's not; poppler/xpdf codebase is just *horrible*.
>
> [1] http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/view/poppler/0.12.4-1/01_revert_abi_change.patch
> [2] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7054
A single patch reverting an ABI change doesn't really provide a whole
lot of evidence for your dramatic conclusions. And like I said, debian
already has a solution for upstream's bad behavior. It isn't really a
big deal.
Mike
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