[Freewx-maint] Bug#644571: uses libgnomeprint which is scheduled for removal

Olly Betts olly at survex.com
Mon Oct 10 23:25:03 UTC 2011


On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 04:44:59PM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
> Am 10.10.2011 12:53, schrieb Olly Betts:
> > On Fri, Oct 07, 2011 at 10:03:29PM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
> >> Attached is a patch which disables the gnomeprint support in wxwidgets.
> >> This will make wxwidgets use its internal postscript printing code [1].
> > 
> > Did you forget to actually attach the patch?
> 
> Indeed. Attached now

Thanks.

> > I understand the desire to remove a library deprecated upstream, but
> > unless it's evolved a lot since I last looked, the internal printing
> > code isn't nearly as nice.
> 
> It is still functional though, right?

I've not tried with the built-in code for a while, but I remember I'd
been struggling a lot to get it to work well and was relieved when the
gnomeprint code was added.  I fear it probably hasn't seen much love
since then as most people will have been using the gnomeprint stuff, but
perhaps I'm being pessimistic.

> What exactly would be the problems switching back to the internal
> printing code and which applications would be seriously affected by
> this?

I'll give it a try and see.

> Has it changed between 2.6 and 2.8?

I don't know.  Personally I don't have a lot of interest in the 2.6
packages at this point and wouldn't mind just ripping gnomeprint
support out there (though there's the minor issue that 2.6 still has
FTBFS bugs, but hopefully the fixes I just made to 2.8 should be usable
for 2.6 too).

> > Do you have an approximate timeline for the removal of libgnomeprint?
> 
> The plan was to remove it for squeeze already and we definitely want
> to resp.  are going to remove it for wheezy. That leaves around 6-7
> months of development time until the prospective freeze starts. So we
> should definitely start any efforts as early as possible.

OK.  I think if the internal code proves problematic I'll look at the
feasibility of trying to backport the gtkprint code to 2.8 

> >> Long term, wxwidgets should be updated to 2.9.x which provides printing
> >> support using GtkPrint.
> > 
> > Note that 2.9.x is a development series, so probably unsuitable for
> > packaging (until it's declared stable of course).
> 
> Do you know when such a stable release is planned?

http://wxwidgets.blogspot.com/2011/07/292-and-plans-for-future.html
says "3.0 will probably happen in the beginning of the next year rather
than in this one", but it's already years past the original plan of when
it would be out, so I'm not sure I'd rely on that too much (for example,
the front page of http://wxwidgets.org/ links to a blog post from
2007-11-04 about 3.0).

I guess there's some chance it'll be out and in a suitable state in time
for wheezy, but it seems to me that the only sane choice for the "main"
version in wheezy is going to be wx 2.8.

> What are the plans regarding getting packages updated to 2.8 and
> removing 2.6?

I've only really just started working on wx packaging - I made an upload
a few hours ago which fixes the 3 RC bugs plus some low-hanging fruit in
the 2.8 packages, and my plan next is to try to update to the latest
upstream 2.8 release - i.e. 2.8.12 rather than 2.8.10, but the scale of
the changes is rather more than the +2 might suggest so this needs a bit
of care:

 2029 files changed, 117347 insertions(+), 69829 deletions(-)

To be fair, quite a lot of that seem to be in generated files, but
still...

I'd like to migrate everyone from 2.6 to 2.8 and get the 2.6 packages
removed for wheezy, though I'm not sure how realistic that is yet.  I
discussed this with Ron a bit last night, and he seems to think it's
time to start pushing in that direction, so I'm going to start working
on that soon.

Cheers,
    Olly





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