Bug#244601: tetex-bin: package fails to configure: Error: `mpost -ini -jobname=metafun -progname=mpost metafun.mp' failed

[Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr>]

Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> wrote:

> Thank you, that is a good idea. I guess there is no possibility to do a
> string search over the BTS, something like "/usr/share/texmf/web2c AND
> (symlink OR (symbolic NEAR link)) NOT 'Package: tetex-*'"?

This is probably something for the BTS LDAP interface, but I know
nothing about LDAP. I Cced Andreas Barth; he probably knows whether this
is possible (out of the box or not) with that interface.

If you can dump the BTS in a format like this:

<start-of-header of your choice>
  <package name>
<end-of-header of your choice>
<bug log 1>
<start-of-header of your choice>
  <package name>
<end-of-header of your choice>
<bug log 2>
...

(the spaces and newlines are not necessary, I only added them for
readability), then this is trivial to do with TDBSF[1].

You would use a search expression such as:

    "/usr/share/texmf/web2c\\b" &
    ("\\bsymlink\\b%I" | "\\bsymbolic\\b%I" ~3 "\\blink\\b%I") &
    ! tetex-[-a-zA-Z]+<your chosen header-body-separator>

(\b is the match-empty-string-at-the-beginning-or-end-of-a-word Python
regexp and %I stands for "ignore case for this regexp match [this is a
Python regexp flag])

(Of course, you can miss possible matching bug logs if their *contents*
matches "tetex-[-a-zA-Z]+<your chosen header-body-separator>" but the
probability for this to happen is fairly low if you choose a reasonably
distinctive regexp for <your chosen header-body-separator>; same thing
for <start-of-header of your choice> and <end-of-header of your choice>;
this is inherent in the "database" format of TDBSF... which I didn't
choose; I only wrote this program as a replacement for an existing dead
tool, and this design choice is why I never advertised TDBSF---well,
until today ;-).


 [1] http://people.via.ecp.fr/~flo/2001/tdbsf/tdbsf.html

-- 
Florent