Re: future of xprint-related packages
On Sun, 2009-08-02 at 14:19 +0200, Julien Cristau wrote:
> Hi,
>
> xprint has been removed from unstable for months now, libXfont upstream
> removed support for it, and there doesn't seem to be any movement
> towards bringing it back. So I'm wondering if xprint-utils and
> libxprintutil should be removed as well, and maybe eventually also libxp
> (which has a handful of reverse deps) and x11proto-print. Opinions?
>
I have xprint building and running, but client apps segfault when trying
to use it to print. That's with some artificial workarounds trying to
restore or paper over the holes left after Xprint support was removed
from libxfont. I've tried copying over the removed pieces of libfont in
to Xprt's source, but it hasn't fixed the segfault.
For the purposes of getting it done, wrapped up and concluded I'm
inclined to just same a dependency for Xprt on libxfont1.3. I don't
think it's worth bothering any further getting Xprint functioning in a
libxfont1.4 world. That is, deeper inspection of the excised libxfont
code, copied into Xprt, can probably be made to eventually work, but I
don't think it's worth the hours of effort getting that done and
completed.
I propose therefore shipping a libxfont1.3 package. Would probably need
a libxfont1.3-dev as well for building which will have to conflict with
libxfont-dev. A tad messy, but in practice no real drama
(libxfont1.3-dev would be used only in chroots or pbuilders so as not to
interfere with an installation of libxfont-dev).
The alternative of course would be to just forget about Xprint
altogether, but it would help my OCD levels to have it tucked into bed
and put to sleep (in the euthanasia sense) in a mostly tidy fashion like
this.
If there are no howling cries of outrage, I'll create libxfont1.3
branches and packages to do this.
Drew
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