[Pkg-bitcoin-devel] Armory - Looking for Sponsor

[Joseph Bisch]

Hi Tristan,

On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 12:25 AM, Tristan Seligmann
<mithrandi at mithrandi.net> wrote:
> First of all, sorry that I was not able to look at this sooner; I
> suspect it may be too late to get Armory into Jessie at this stage,
> which is a shame. However, there is still a possibility of a backport
> once Jessie is released.

Thank you for looking at Armory. I agree that it may be too late to
get Armory into Jessie, but I will work on a backport for Jessie once
it is released.

> 2) The git repository referenced in debian/control does not have your
> latest changes. I think if you join pkg-bitcoin on Alioth, we could
> move this into a repository under pkg-bitcoin.

I requested to join pkg-bitcoin on Alioth. The reason the git
repository currently in debian/control is out of date is that I was
having some problems with git-buildpackage. When I would make changes
and try to reimport the dsc I ended up with multiple commits saying
that I imported the version. I would git reset hard, but gbp would
somehow retain the history and restore it when I import the dsc again.
So my solution is to wait until I finish working on a version and then
import the dsc just once. I guess I can import the upstream source and
do development in the git repo instead of importing the dsc.

I must just be using gbp incorrectly.

> 5) dh_auto_test is disabled in debian/rules; I see that the tests fail
> to run if I reenable it. I did not look into this further, but I was
> wondering if you had looked at it; it would be good to run the tests
> at build time if possible.

I guess that is a bug introduced when I removed the convenience
copies. I did not edit the cppForSwig/gtest/Makefile to use the Debian
libs instead of the convenience copies. I have now done so but left
the tests disabled, because they fail. Specifically, I get
"RuntimeError: Cannot have more than one Test-In-A-Box session
simultaneously (yet)". Upstream is aware that the tests fail.

> 6) The Help -> About dialog gives the version as "0.92.3-beta". The
> "-beta" string appears to be hardcoded into qtdialogs.py; this seems
> like an upstream problem, unless perhaps something in the build is
> supposed to be replacing this string (I did look at the
> release_scripts directory, but did not see anything that would modify
> qtdialogs.py).

Upstream considers any version of Armory before 1.0.0 to be in beta.
So the UI is supposed to display -beta at the end of any version
before 1.0.0. It does not indicate that the release is a beta release
in the traditional sense.

> 7) Since I had not run bitcoind on the system I tested with, Armory
> wanted to download the blockchain bootstrap files by BitTorrent.
> However, this fails with the following error:
>
> (ERROR) ArmoryUtils.py:3080 - Error in pybkgdthread: 'upnp_nat_access'
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "/usr/lib/armory/armoryengine/ArmoryUtils.py", line 3078, in run
>     self.output = self.func()
>   File "/usr/lib/armory/armoryengine/ArmoryUtils.py", line 3015, in funcPartial
>     return thefunc(*args, **kwargs)
>   File "/usr/lib/armory/armoryengine/torrentDL.py", line 398, in
> doTheDownloadThing
>     upnp_type = UPnP_test(config['upnp_nat_access'])
> KeyError: 'upnp_nat_access'
>
> This seems to be caused by version skew between the upstream code, and
> the version of bittornado in Debian; torrentDL.py includes some code
> copied from bittornado, but this code is different in the version in
> Debian (config file variables are different, among other things).
> While this does not render Armory completely unusable (there are other
> ways to do the initial blockchain download), it is inconvenient and
> confusing for users.

I was able to fix this by adding a patch that changes the line to
"upnp_type = 0" (which I got from the bittornado source in Debian). I
was able to download the torrent up to 10% (then I stopped it). So I
assume the issue is fixed.

I reuploaded Armory to mentors[0] with all the changes you mentioned
in your email.

[0] - http://mentors.debian.net/package/armory

Thanks,
Joseph