incompatibility between jed-extra-0.1.8 and jed-0.99.17

G. Milde g.milde at web.de
Thu Mar 23 10:00:15 UTC 2006


Dear Alan, dear Jed Deb Maintainers,

Alan was trapped by the incompatibility between jed-extra-0.1.8 and
jed-0.99.17, both part of Ubuntu Breezy.

He agreed to participate in testing the new jed-extra.

Rafael, is there an anonymous SVN access to our repositroy on alioth?

 * If yes, could you add a description to the DJG Guidelines?
 * If no, would you agree to let Alan join the DJG group so he can get
   (and update) a working copy of the SVN repository?

Details:

On 21.03.06, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> On 2006-03-21 09:55+0100 G. Milde wrote:
> >On 20.03.06, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> >>To answer the implied question I am using pure Ubuntu Breezy which indeed
> >>does have a combination of libslang-2.0.4-4,
> >>jed-0.99.16+0.99.17-pre111-0ubuntu1, and jed-extra-0.1.8
... 
> There is already a Ubuntu bug report (at
> https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/jed-extra/+bug/35426)
> about the original problem. I will append to that report as you suggest
> if/when my jed experimental testing looks like it is getting somewhere.
...

> >>Alternatively, I could use your subversion repository, but I have no
> >>subversion experience (although lots of cvs experience) so I would
> >>need a cookbook from you about exactly what commands are needed to
> >>checkout your source tree and prepare it (if any additional
> >>preparation is necessary such as running an autotools bootstrap
> >>script) so that I can debuild it to produce the binary debs.
 
> >But I believe the easiest way would be if I send you the "binary"
> >package (it is quite small)... see attachment.
> >
> >Have a look at the documentation first, maybe also at the contents.
> >
> >Remember, this is highly experimental, it works for me but I cannot
> >guarantee that it will not screw up the system (it did for me once during
> >the test process)
> 
> Out of curiosity, how did that happen?  My packaging background (from
> years ago) is rpms so my mental model of a binary deb install is that
> it only installs files and runs some scripts.  The file install should
> not be a problem unless you accidentally overwrite a system file that
> is not part of jed. If your files are confined to jed-related stuff,
> then I would think the file install could only screw up jed.  

My disclaimer was a bit too generic and stark.

Actually, it did only affect Jed, but as I need Jed for my daily work,
this amounted to an essential problem.

The problem was with some non-working install|remove script that
prevented me from both, updating and removing the jed package.

> Anyhow, when I used to install strange rpms on my RedHat system in the
> late 90's, I would check the file list first (including permissions),
> then the scripts to assure myself the binary rpm install could not do
> anything system damaging.

An alternative is to set up a mirror of the base system (I have it under
/mirrors/base/), chroot to it and do the testing there. This way no
damage whatsoever can be done to the real system and if the mirror
system is damaged beyond repair, it can be set up anew from scratch.
Also, testing in the mirror has the advantage that you start from a
clean state ond cannot overlook problems with missing files that are
present on your system but not in the package.

 
> >If you prefer (or if there are problems), I can of course also send you a
> >bzipped tar of the package source tree.
> 
> This is the approach I prefer since what I want to do is test your entire
> jed + slang + jed-extra experimental debian source packages.  If those
> tarballs are too large for e-mail, could you give me an ftp location of
> where to pick them up?

This is a rather large work program. 

> After the first (relatively large) transfer to me of a current snapshot of
> all your jed-related source trees, then I suggest you save clean trees of
> what you sent me. That should allow sending of any further changes to me for
> testing via small patches. 

In this case I would recommend you to use the SVN repository at Alioth
(instead of me sending you a constant streem of patches). After all, this
is exactly what CVS and SVN were made for.

This is why I asked our Administrator to get you SVN access. (If there is
no anonymous access, you will have to get a guest account at alioth as
well, however this is not too big work.)

> Also, I can apt-get source on the Ubuntu packages and do a direct
> comparison between their source and yours to give me some reassurance
> that nothing system damaging has been put into place by accident in
> your Debian experimental versions. To further that reassurance, I also
> plan to build binary debs from Ubuntu source and yours using debuild
> and compare file lists and scripts (e.g., preinst, postinst, prerm, and
> postrm) between the two sets of binary debs before installation.

The experimental jed source package is available under
  http://packages.debian.org/experimental/source/jed

jed-extra_2.1-1 is not yet released to Debian/experimental.


Guenter


-- 
Milde ife.et.tu-dresden.de



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