[Pkg-ime-devel] Status of scim 1.2.x packages

[Ming Hua]

Greetings -

I've made quite some progress on scim 1.2 branch packaging.  For scim,
the code are checked into Alioth SVN, 1.2 branch:
    svn+ssh://<username>@svn.debian.org/svn/pkg-ime/scim/branches/1.2

The important changes for scim module maintainers:

- scim now builds two library binary packages, libscim6 and libscim-dev.
  So for all scim modules, the Build-Depends should change from
  scim-dev (>= 1.0.1) to libscim-dev (>= 1.2.0).  Or just libscim-dev
  without version.  Then the binary package built should depends on
  libscim6.  You still should depend on scim (>= 1.2.0).

- The directory for scim modules changes from /usr/lib/scim-1.0/1.0.0 to
  /usr/lib/scim-1.0/1.2.0.  My understanding is that most module
  packages use a patch to change Makefile.am and Makefile.in, and set
  this install path (usually it's /usr/lib/scim-1.0 from upstream, I
  don't like it because it complicates ABI transitions, but that may be
  a good topic for another mail), so you can just change the patch to
  use .../1.2.0 instead of .../1.0.0.  You may also want to have a look
  at scim-anthy, which uses pkg-config to auto choose this install path.

- libscim-dev now correctly depends on libgtk2.0-dev and libpango1.0-dev
  since the scim headers include headers from these packages.  So if
  your module doesn't include any gtk or pango headers directly, you can
  consider dropping libgtk2.0-dev and/or libpango1.0-dev from your
  Build-Depends now.  libscim-dev will gaurantee that these headers are
  pulled by dependency from now on.  If you see an FTBFS because of some
  header you don't include directly, it's a bug in scim and please file
  it.

Okay that's about it.  The source and binary packages can be obtained
from
    http://chinese.alioth.debian.org/scim-experimental/
or sources.list line
    deb http://chinese.alioth.debian.org scim-experimental/
There are also my scim-pinyin (formerly known as scim-chinese) packages
built against scim 1.2.

So scim module maintainers, I would ask you to test these scim 1.2
packages if you have time, and port your module package to scim 1.2.  It
should not be hard because scim 1.2 is mostly API compatible with 1.0,
and there should be 1.2 compatible releases from upstream already.

If any maintainer doesn't have time, I would like to ask for your
permission to let me do some preliminary porting.  I would like to see
most modules built against 1.2 before uploading it to sid.  I'll send
patches to this list.

I would also like to push 1.2 packages into experimental as soon as
possible, but I know Osamu is still settling down from the moving, and
probably don't have time or Internet access to sponsor me.  So I'll
wait.

Oh and by the way, with scim 1.2 avaiable, there is a new module
scim-input-pad good for packaging.  If no one else would like to take
it, I'll file ITP this weekend.

Regards,
Ming
2005.06.03