Bug#444392: Debian: 444392: miniupnpc ITP status?

[Thomas Goirand <thomas@goirand.fr>]

Paul Wise wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> What is the status of this ITP? warzone2100 2.3 release candidates are
> currently embedding this instead of depending on an external package.
> 

Hi,

The current status is: TOTALLY STUCK. Why? Because the current
maintainer of iptables-dev refuses to ship iptables.h, despite the fact
that many people requested that it was added back.

According to the author of miniupnp (which is a close friend of mine),
there's no other official API in the kernel for what he needs to do. The
only way is using iptables.h.

The maintainer of iptables replied to many (not even to myself, but to
others) that iptables.h is to be considered as private API, and
shouldn't be used. However, iptables.h is included in *all other unix
distributions*, and miniupnp has no issue compiling on them (no problem
with Fedora, Gentoo and others for example). Also, there's no point in
saying "this is a private API" if there's no equivalent public API that
can be used, IMHO.

I refuse to embed my own version of iptables.h because of the bad
decision (IMHO) in the iptables-dev maintenance. I suppose everyone will
agree on my specific point here, that duplicating iptables.h would be
the worth decision of them all.

I would love to have this fixed however. Do you believe I should contact
the technical comity to decide what should be done? What are my options
here? I certainly don't want to start a flame war with the maintainer of
iptables that has a strong point (and that must be a nice guy...).

Here's the compilation error (first 3 lines, later of course, lot's of
"undeclared errors" follow):

gcc -Wall -Os -D_GNU_SOURCE   -c -o netfilter/iptcrdr.o netfilter/iptcrdr.c
netfilter/iptcrdr.c:17:22: error: iptables.h: No such file or directory
netfilter/iptcrdr.c:32:36: error: linux/netfilter/nf_nat.h: No such file
or directory

note that iptables-dev IS installed on my test platform (up-to-date SID,
and I just checked once more just now: the situation didn't change).

Your opinion on this would be very valuable, please let me know.

Thomas

P.S: Would you have a bit of time for sponsoring 1 or 2 packages for me
until I get to be a DD?