Dear mentors, As per Tobias Frost's request, I am resending my request for sponsorship to this bug #1062001 (originally #1136984).
In particular, I am looking for a sponsor for my updated package "trader", a simple game of interstellar trading. This update fixes a FTBFS listed in bug #1135930. I have tried to address most of the issues that were raised by Tobias a couple of years ago in this bug thread. Package name: trader Version: 7.21-1 Upstream author: John Zaitseff <[email protected] that's me! URL: https://www.zap.org.au/projects/trader/ License: GPL3+ Vcs: https://git.zap.org.au/git/trader.git -b with-debian Section: games The Vcs field will work with "git clone" without authentication (or just use a user agent field starting with "git" -- it's to stop mindless AI bots from trashing our server). The source builds one binary package: trader - simple game of interstellar trading I have successfully built binaries using Debian chroots on The ZAP Group Australia server. You can download my build using dget: dget -x https://ftp.zap.org.au/pub/trader/unix/binary/debian/trader_7.21-1.dsc Changes since the last upload: trader (7.21-1) unstable; urgency=medium * New upstream release: includes a fix for the FTBFS seen under Autoconf 2.73. Closes: #1135930. * Updated to Debian Policy 4.7.4: removed "Priority: optional" from debian/control as this is now the default. * Moved to dpkg-build-api v1 for building. * Adjusted build dependencies as required for Debian old-stable. * Removed Vcs-Browser from debian/control as the URL in this field was being subjected to a continual and sustained DDOS. Closes: #1132702. * Changed Vcs-Git link to use HTTPS instead of the Git protocol. * Added details of all relevant source files to debian/copyright (as requested by Tobias Frost). * Enabled build hardening in debian/rules. * Converted debian/watch to version 5 format. * Removed superfluous signatures from debian/upstream/signing-key.asc. * Incorporates changes made to previous upstream releases (not uploaded to Debian): changed documentation (history of the game), updated translations, renamed AppStream metainfo and desktop files. -- John Zaitseff <[email protected] Mon, 18 May 2026 14:56:21 +1000 To possibly forestall some questions: yes, I could use the autoconf-archive package when building, but I don't think this is as simple as ripping out Star Trader's m4 directory -- I have my own custom code in that directory too. But the upstream autoconf-archive hasn't seen much change for many years, so I don't see much that will be gained or lost either way. And yes, I could possibly use the gnulib package too at build time, but this would introduce the possibility of breakage and make backporting much more complicated. Gnulib have, in the past one or two years, changed the names of modules. When I updated the code for this release, for example, I had to change: * locale -> locale-h * monetary -> monetary-h * stdbool -> bool * stdio -> stdio-h * string -> string-h * sys_stat -> sys_stat-h * sys_time -> sys_time-h * unistd -> unistd-h * wchar -> wchar-h In addition, some _LDADD library invocations had changed environment variable used in src/Makefile.am. Accounting for these changes in various versions of the gnulib package (particularly if backporting to Debian Trixie, for example) would not be easy. Forgive me, but I just don't see what benefit the trader package would receive by doing so. But I'm willing to be persuaded! Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. I'm more than willing to work through any issues that you might identify. Thanks! Yours truly, John Zaitseff -- John Zaitseff ╭───╮ Email: [email protected] The ZAP Group │ Z │ GnuPG: 0x0D254111C4EE569B Australia Inc. ╰───╯ https://www.zap.org.au/~john/
