Re: xpdf removed from testing? - Back again?
On Wed, 2014-01-15 at 22:09 +0100, Svante Signell wrote:
On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 17:47 +, Ian Jackson wrote:
Svante Signell writes (Re: xpdf removed from testing?):
On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote:
That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes
fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing.
OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon
there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any
interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is
it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers?
If the existing maintainer doesn't have the effort to stop the package
being removed from testing then clearly they need help.
Noted, action taken!
If you provide patches, with a view to xpdf staying in the archive,
you should probably be prepared for the maintainer to offer you the
package :-).
I might be interested to continue working on this package, as a start
with the maintainers blessing, see below.
I would love to help but my I'm out of the special waterproof tuits
required for swamp-draining. Good luck.
Thanks!
Yay, xpdf builds again (and prints) :-)
I cleaned out the duplicated code between xpdf and poppler (which is a
continuation of xpdf becoming a PDF rendering library). Some more
cleaning is still needed, to actually remove all irrelevant code (and
update relevant code). Is it possible to create a new code base from my
changes and the many patches?
The patched version of xpdf has been tested with both libpoppler19
(0.18.4-10) and libpoppler37 (0.22.5-3). libfontconfig version is
2.11.0-2.
Additionally, the build system needs an upgrade to use auto{,re}conf,
standards version 3.9.5, etc. I'm willing to do that too. Should I send
a mega-patch against 3.0.3-11 in a bug report or is there a better
way?
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389860201.9619.53.ca...@g3620.my.own.domain
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
On 15/01/14 21:09, Svante Signell wrote:
I cleaned out the duplicated code between xpdf and poppler (which is a
continuation of xpdf becoming a PDF rendering library). Some more
cleaning is still needed, to actually remove all irrelevant code (and
update relevant code). Is it possible to create a new code base from my
changes and the many patches?
This (and the build-system fixing you mentioned in another mail) sounds
like a job for a new upstream project, rather than something that is
in-scope for Debian packaging. If you[1] want to be its upstream
maintainer, I would suggest either forking xpdf under a new name[2] of
your choice, or asking its (former?) upstream maintainers to give you
custody of the official continuation of xpdf.
If nobody wants to be the de facto upstream maintainer of this fork,
then I don't think it's appropriate to keep it in Debian either: I think
there's a limit to the sort of changes that it's appropriate to make via
distro patches. Refactoring and deleting unnecessary code is a great
thing to do as an upstream, but not as a distributor.
If, as an upstream, your only release mechanism is via Debian, that's
your decision, of course; but even if it is, I think a fork that behaves
like its own upstream project should be identified as such.
I haven't used xpdf for years, so I have no informed opinion on the
choice between it's worth taking over and fixing vs. let it die,
switch to something else.
S
[1] all uses of you refer to any prospective maintainer, not just Svante
[2] not necessarily a new name for the package/binary (particularly if
the current upstream is completely dormant), but it'd be polite to at
least have a conventional name for your version in its documentation,
similar to the way {AGPL,Aladdin,ESP,GNU} Ghostscript are labelled
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52d7cd2d@debian.org
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 17:47 +, Ian Jackson wrote: Svante Signell writes (Re: xpdf removed from testing?): On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote: That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing. OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers? If the existing maintainer doesn't have the effort to stop the package being removed from testing then clearly they need help. Noted, action taken! If you provide patches, with a view to xpdf staying in the archive, you should probably be prepared for the maintainer to offer you the package :-). I might be interested to continue working on this package, as a start with the maintainers blessing, see below. I would love to help but my I'm out of the special waterproof tuits required for swamp-draining. Good luck. Thanks! Yay, xpdf builds again (and prints) :-) I cleaned out the duplicated code between xpdf and poppler (which is a continuation of xpdf becoming a PDF rendering library). Some more cleaning is still needed, to actually remove all irrelevant code (and update relevant code). Is it possible to create a new code base from my changes and the many patches? The patched version of xpdf has been tested with both libpoppler19 (0.18.4-10) and libpoppler37 (0.22.5-3). libfontconfig version is 2.11.0-2. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389820167.9619.36.ca...@g3620.my.own.domain
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
On Jan 13, Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote: Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream? Do you need more reasons? Maybe this question should go to debian-release instead? Maybe you should send patches instead. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
On 01/13/2014 05:38 PM, Svante Signell wrote: Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream? The 7 RC bugs are the exact reason: http://packages.qa.debian.org/x/xpdf/news/20131208T163914Z.html This is part of Debian's new scheme to keep an always releasable testing. And if no one can be bothered to fix these bugs, the package will automatically removed from testing. Adrian -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52d419ba.9010...@physik.fu-berlin.de
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:38:21 +0100 Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. No, it will be removed from testing. That means that new users won't have it available but anyone who already has it installed is welcome to it, with all it's bugs. apt does not remove it from installed systems just because it is no longer downloadable, at least until it gets in the way of other upgrades or you actively seek out orphaned / obsolete packages. If it is removed from testing due to being unsuitable for release (in this case, seven times over), then it clearly is obsolete. I like that program very much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream? That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing. -- Neil Williams = http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote: On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:38:21 +0100 Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote: I like that program very much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream? That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing. OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389633561.20551.66.ca...@s1499.it.kth.se
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
Hi Svante, On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 06:19:21PM +0100, Svante Signell wrote: On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote: On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:38:21 +0100 Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote: I like that program very much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream? That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing. OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers? The option of the maintainer increases drastically if one of 1000 users would care for one bug and provides a patch. May be you show your evident interest by simply beeing one of such group of 1000 users? Kind regards Andreas. -- http://fam-tille.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140113172604.gp7...@an3as.eu
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
Svante Signell writes (Re: xpdf removed from testing?): On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote: That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing. OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers? If the existing maintainer doesn't have the effort to stop the package being removed from testing then clearly they need help. If you provide patches, with a view to xpdf staying in the archive, you should probably be prepared for the maintainer to offer you the package :-). I would love to help but my I'm out of the special waterproof tuits required for swamp-draining. Good luck. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/21204.9893.216127.986...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
previously on this list Svante Signell contributed: Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very much. I like it too but it's save dialog is pretty terrible. Have you checked out mupdf. No save but similar otherwise. p.s. qpdfview is shaping up and remembers tabs too. -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) In Other Words - Don't design like polkit or systemd ___ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/96511.59881...@smtp101.mail.ir2.yahoo.com
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 18:19:21 +0100 Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote: On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:38:21 +0100 Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote: I like that program very much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream? That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing. OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers? As a maintainer (upstream Debian) for one package using PDF documents, I see all PDF tools as vulnerable to security problems and all have relatively long lists of dependencies which keep moving ahead. A dead upstream is a indication of several things: 0: The upstream maintainers have lost the will to fight the tide of bugs 1: The Debian maintainer does not have the time / desire to take on the upstream role on top of everything else 2: patches just for Debian are not going to get testing elsewhere and patches from elsewhere will be hard to integrate (that is upstream's job) 3: even if some RC bugs are fixed, the lack of upstream makes it hard to see how future ones will get fixed. 4: the code probably hides some nasty, ugly assumptions and hacks which is why upstream gave up on it in the first place So, yes. 9 times out of 10 all of this will be a complete waste of effort for everyone concerned, most of all for the users wanting bugs fixed. Been there, done that - all that happened was that I kept a broken package hobbling along for another two stable releases, overall code quality falling with every release, until I removed it from Debian entirely. If my package had even a few of the RC bugs affecting xpdf, I would have removed it from unstable long, long ago, let alone just testing. Remove it now. If a *team* magically appears, then maybe code quality could improve. A single person doing the upstream role will rarely have enough time to actually improve code quality. As a user who seems to care about the package, don't you actually want to use a package where someone would have responded to the bugs? How would you feel if you had filed one or two of those RC bugs? -- Neil Williams = http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
* Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com, 2014-01-13, 17:38: Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, For very small values of 7. :-) a dead upstream? The last xpdf release was in 2011, the previous one in 2007. Upstream certainly doesn't subscribe to the “release eary, release early” philosophy, but the report of their death might be an exaggeration. But then, xpdf in Debian is so heavily patched, that it doesn't have much to do with the upstream version anyway... -- Jakub Wilk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140113182558.ga3...@jwilk.net
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com writes: OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers? While someone could fix the package, you may want to consider not doing so. After running into endless bugs in xpdf, I personally switched to mupdf for a light-weight PDF reader and found it superior in every respect except for the fact that it doesn't, so far as I can tell, support printing. So I use mupdf to view PDF documents, and on the rare occasion that I want to print one, I open it in gv (which I find clunkier, but which generally works fine and prints). -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87fvor4t95@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 19:25 +0100, Jakub Wilk wrote: * Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com, 2014-01-13, 17:38: Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, For very small values of 7. :-) There are seven, but five of them are merged. Regards, Adam -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389644206.4536.18.ca...@jacala.jungle.funky-badger.org
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream? Do you need more reasons? Actually *1* RC bug that was introduced by replacing the proper xpdf code with linking to poppler - a moving target that never cares for any other packages. poppler pulls in pthread and that goes boom. Yes, xpdf works very well. THose people having problem should simple compile a version from upstream without the pesty Debian changes to link against poppler, and it will work again. Norbert PREINING, Norbert http://www.preining.info JAIST, Japan TeX Live Debian Developer DSA: 0x09C5B094 fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76 A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140113221635.gl24...@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at
Re: xpdf removed from testing?
Le mardi 14 janvier 2014 à 07:16 +0900, Norbert Preining a écrit : Yes, xpdf works very well. THose people having problem should simple compile a version from upstream without the pesty Debian changes to link against poppler, and it will work again. And as a bonus, the PDF exploits will work again, too. -- Josselin Mouette /\./\ pouet pouet « Sans puissance, la maîtrise n'est rien. » -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389652259.13485.2.camel@tomoyo
