Ubuntu
vnc4 package

Bug #119982
Comment #32

Comment 32 for bug 119982

Revision history for this message

Michael Terry (mterry) wrote on 2009-10-16:

#32

OK, here's the story. At one point, Debian's maintainer decided to embed XFree86 into the package because it didn't quite work with xorg. But when that version percolated to Ubuntu, we decided we'd rather use xorg, so we rebased vnc4 on xorg. (the particulars are not clear to me -- I'm scraping this together from bug reports and changelogs)

Since then, the Debian packaging has changed a lot to keep up with the times. The Ubuntu packaging not so much. Nowadays, there are several issues when building our package (it embeds xorg 1.0.2, while Karmic is on 1.6; its xorg uses obsolete automake scripts which causes errors; it references very old packages in the Build-Depends line (including one that no longer exists)).

David's report to Debian got summarily closed because he was using our Ubuntu version. I've opened a new bug about this patch, noting again that Red Hat had the same problem. Hopefully it won't be closed. Will update the Debian bug task when their bts assigns my bug a number.

So ideally, our packaging would be updated to the new xorg and fix the various build issues. Realistically, that's not happening before Karmic (we're too close to release and it would not just be a bug fix at that point). It may be possible to get the package into shape, but only on a superficial level (would still use ancient xorg).

Omer, thanks for the patch. One tip is that you should use patch tags rather than prose (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/PatchTaggingGuidelines). But I was delighted to see any description of the patch at all. :) Also, rather than apply a patch that doesn't unapply itself when running 'clean', it's just as fine to apply the patch directly if the package doesn't have a patch system.

So, I'm not applying anything yet. To fix this for Karmic, we'd have to have a patch that removed the mesa-swx11-source Build-Depend (I think it's a safe removal?) and that added a patch to the embedded xorg configure.ac (the current package has an example patch to xorg already -- just copy that pattern) to fix use of AC_SUBST (ala http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg-commit/2008-April/015845.html). There may be more issues lurking.

And that's the story of why this bug has managed to stuck around over several major releases.

OK, here's the story.  At one point, Debian's maintainer decided to embed XFree86 into the package because it didn't quite work with xorg.  But when that version percolated to Ubuntu, we decided we'd rather use xorg, so we rebased vnc4 on xorg.  (the particulars are not clear to me -- I'm scraping this together from bug reports and changelogs)

Since then, the Debian packaging has changed a lot to keep up with the times.  The Ubuntu packaging not so much.  Nowadays, there are several issues when building our package (it embeds xorg 1.0.2, while Karmic is on 1.6; its xorg uses obsolete automake scripts which causes errors; it references very old packages in the Build-Depends line (including one that no longer exists)).

David's report to Debian got summarily closed because he was using our Ubuntu version.  I've opened a new bug about this patch, noting again that Red Hat had the same problem.  Hopefully it won't be closed.  Will update the Debian bug task when their bts assigns my bug a number.

So ideally, our packaging would be updated to the new xorg and fix the various build issues.  Realistically, that's not happening before Karmic (we're too close to release and it would not just be a bug fix at that point).  It may be possible to get the package into shape, but only on a superficial level (would still use ancient xorg).

Omer, thanks for the patch.  One tip is that you should use patch tags rather than prose (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/PatchTaggingGuidelines).  But I was delighted to see any description of the patch at all.  :)  Also, rather than apply a patch that doesn't unapply itself when running 'clean', it's just as fine to apply the patch directly if the package doesn't have a patch system.

So, I'm not applying anything yet.  To fix this for Karmic, we'd have to have a patch that removed the mesa-swx11-source Build-Depend (I think it's a safe removal?) and that added a patch to the embedded xorg configure.ac (the current package has an example patch to xorg already -- just copy that pattern) to fix use of AC_SUBST (ala http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg-commit/2008-April/015845.html).  There may be more issues lurking.

And that's the story of why this bug has managed to stuck around over several major releases.

Ubuntuvnc4 package

Comment 32 for bug 119982

Ubuntu
vnc4 package