[Dict-common-dev] Debian transition to Aspell 0.60

[Brian Nelson]

I've finally decided to put into motion a transition to Aspell 0.60 in
Debian.  Aspell 0.60 is a major release in terms of functionality but
is a relatively minor change from a packaging perspective.  In
particular, the libaspell soname has not changed, so no software using
the library will need to be rebuilt.  This should be a relatively
painless transition, so I do not believe it will pose a major problem to
sarge.

The one hurdle in the way is the binary format of the dictionaries has
incompatibly changed again.  Thus, the old dictionaries compiled with
0.50 will not work and must be rebuilt.  To make this transition as
painless as possible, I propose updating each dictionary as follows:

* Change the build-depends to aspell-bin (>> 0.60)

* Change the provides from aspell-dictionary to aspell6-dictionary.

Since the new libaspell15 will no longer read the old dictionaries, it
will conflict with "aspell-dictionary" while recommending
"aspell6-dictionary".  This will force any of the old dictionaries that
provide aspell-dictionary to be removed.  Also, any packages depending
on aspell-dictionary will unfortunately have to be updated to use
aspell6-dictionary instead.  These packages are: abiword-common,
sylpheed, sylpheed-claws, ekg, ekg2.

You may find the new aspell packages available at:

  http://people.debian.org/~pyro/pending/

Please test building dictionaries with the new packages and let me know
if you have any problems.  Also, if you find any flaws in my proposal,
please let me know.

I'm going on a pseudo-vacation for the next two weeks and would really
like to upload the new packages when I return.  I'd appreciate it if
someone would setup a staging area to collect all of the newly built
dictionaries so that they can all be uploaded together.  Please
coordinate on the dict-common-dev at lists.alioth.debian.org mailing list,
unless of course Agustin objects.  ;)

-- 
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pretend to like each other.