entities from the sgml-base maintainer
Hi,
Just a quick update on what's happening in 'sgml-base' land.
'install-sgmlcatalog --install'
-------------------------------
Using this to register your SGML catalogs is now considered deprecated.
The current practice is to use 'update-catalog'.
Only three packages still use this: 'alcovebook-sgml', 'openjade1.3' and
'festival'. Bug reports have been filed (#186771, #177801 and #115911,
respectively). Yann probably is already busy fixing 'alcovebook-sgml'
and 'openjade1.3' (he fixed 'sgml2x' yesterday; thanks Yann!).
'festival' is a bigger problem, since it currently doesn't even build from
source. The maintainer (David Huggins-Daines <dhd@debian.org>) mentioned
in #179490 that he's not very active and is thinking about orphaning this
package, so this package is in trouble (see below for why).
next version of 'sgml-base'
---------------------------
At the end of April 2003 I'll upload the next version of 'sgml-base'.
This version will officially have 'install-sgmlcatalog --install'
marked as deprecated. This means it will spit out a corresponding
message (pointing to using 'update-catalog') and will _not_ add
the catalogs to the system anymore.
'/usr/lib/sgml'
---------------
This new version of 'sgml-base' will also contain code to clean up
'/usr/lib/sgml'. Each invocation of 'install-sgmlcatalog --remove'
checks whether the transitional catalog in '/usr/lib/sgml' is empty.
If so, it's removed and unregistered from the supercatalog. Next, if
'/usr/lib/sgml' is empty the symlink to the supercatalog is removed
and the directory is removed.
This is also the reason why packages with SGML catalogs still have
the 'install-sgmlcatalog --remove' in their prerm script. There
would be no other feasible way to remove '/usr/lib/sgml'.
backwards compatibility symlinks
--------------------------------
Currently, the following packages have symlinks in '/usr/lib/sgml' for
backwards compatibility: 'sgml-base', 'sgml-data', 'docbook-dsssl' and
'sp'.
How long do we want to keep these? I would like to propose that we
remove these in sarge+1.
'dh_installcatalogs'
--------------------
Adam wrote a debhelper script (thanks Adam!) which JoeyH kindly added
to the 'debhelper' package (thanks JoeyH!). If you're using debhelper
to build your package, please start using 'dh_installcatalogs'. See
its manual page for all the details.
review of SGML/XML packages
---------------------------
As Adam mentioned in an earlier thread, we're in the process of doing a
review of all the SGML/XML packages. The results of this can be found
on http://people.debian.org/~ardo/PACKAGES/SGML/sgml-base.html. This
page is currently not up-to-date, but I'll fix that in the coming days.
Thanks,
Ardo
--
Ardo van Rangelrooij
home email: ardo@debian.org
home page: http://people.debian.org/~ardo
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