Debian package on life support

[hamish]

Hi,

as you may or may not be aware the debian-qa team just removed the QGIS 0.9.1 package from the unstable and testing repositories.

see this discussion on the DebianGIS mailing list:

​http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.grass.pkg.general/2827 ​http://wiki.debian.org/DebianGis

As I'm sure you'll agree, this sucks on many levels. It probably hurts Ubuntu, Live Knoppix CDs, ....... too.

the acute problem is failure to compile with gcc 4.3, the general (but primary) cause are the many unfixed little problems with the package. see:

​http://bugs.debian.org/474604

It would be really great to have the debian packaging all cleaned up and spiffy so we can ship 0.9.2 with the next stable release (ie Lenny). It seems to me a series of small tasks to do- like missing man pages, so a very achievable goal. Because of the many 3rd party dependencies it takes a long time for the qgis packages to move from Debian/unstable to Debian/testing. So the sooner this gets fixed and in the pipeline the better, as it requires a much longer lead time than the typical debian package.

I think what we need first is a QGIS devel to help lead this effort, or at least volunteer to be the upstream contact point and help coordinate things. I'd rather address issues at the QGIS end rather than have the DebianGIS team try and maintain a massive patch-set for generic issues. (of course Debian-specific changes are not your problem)

thanks for any help, Hamish

[jef]

The gcc4.3 problems where fixed in r8257 already.

[jef]

Replying to hamish:

I think what we need first is a QGIS devel to help lead this effort, or at least volunteer to be the upstream contact point and help coordinate things. I'd rather address issues at the QGIS end rather than have the DebianGIS team try and maintain a massive patch-set for generic issues. (of course Debian-specific changes are not your problem)

I'd be glad to see QGIS back in Debian. What problems are there except for the debian packaging issues?

Appearently the debian/ files in our repository were submitted by DebianGIS and committed in r7164. Both our changes since then and the changes in ​http://debian.gfoss.it/pool/main/q/qgis/qgis_0.9.2~rc20080401-1.diff.gz seem minor. Did the removed package in unstable contain more changes?

[hamish]

Good news, thanks.

For what it's worth: For GRASS we found it endlessly confusing to host debian/ package files both in our CVS and DebianGIS's SVN. We though it would be a nice gesture to include them with the grass for users building their own packages and for debian derived distros. But in practice they were always out of date and un-sync'ed.

Did the removed package in unstable contain more changes?

I don't know, here are the latest DebianGIS SVN changes: ​http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-grass/packages/qgis/trunk/debian/?op=log

Hamish

[jef]

The attached patch fixes reduces the output of lintian to: W: qgis-plugin-grass: package-name-doesnt-match-sonames libqgisgrass0.9 W: libqgis1: package-name-doesnt-match-sonames libqgis-core0.9 libqgis-gui0.9

[jef]

patch to fix debian packaging problems.

[jef]

with the updated patch the packages are lintian clean.

[hamish]

Is the patch against QGIS's debian/ dir:

​http://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/browser/trunk/debian

or DebianGIS's SVN:

​http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-grass/packages/qgis/trunk/debian/?op=log

?

if it does apply to QGIS's OSGeo SVN, is it against the latest trunk/ revision or against 0.9.1?

You will notice that the DebainGIS version has had many changes since the last commit in QGIS's version. (last in DebianGIS SVN: 2 weeks, last in QGIS's SVN: 15 months)

IMO we should remove the debian/ dir from QGIS's svn and focus all efforts in one place (ie DebianGIS's svn). We can arrange to get you write access there if you would like. What do you think?

thanks much, Hamish

[jef]

I don't know to what extend this needs to be addressed in our trac. The debian/ branch in our repository seems to be ok (at least as far as linitian is concerned). What would be the procedure to update the DebianGIS repository to 0.10.0 along with the modified debian/ branch?

[hamish]

In light of the issue at hand, I am not opposed to consolidating the bugs reports as well :)

My main concern was to make sure that communication channels were open between the two projects.

Hamish

[frankie]

I saw the current tree on the qgis and the packaging level is still suboptimal. Just a few points:

• Debian changelog must be informative and complete about the packaging. Last entries are not.
• Policy is outdated.
• Sonames and library names differ.
• Grass plugin is largely broken (this is a concern for me and a heavy regression for qgis in etch).
• Having -core and -gui splitted is silly and unuseful. Third parties plugin would require anyway both qgis and libraries. Avoid binary package pollution please. Ftpmasters refuse package for much less than that. See below.
• There are not .so links in the -dev package.
• Python support and policy complaining are (still) missing.

Have the soname in qgis libs some sense (it will be something different at every release or will it follow some libtool-like scheme)? What is the road map for those libraries? If third-parties development will be limited to plugins it has probably not sense having those libs in /usr/lib, it is much more sensed using a qgis wrapper for instance, and moving them under /usr/lib/qgis. In that case, soname constraints could be relaxed. I would expect no independent binaries that will use those libs, so keeping them under /usr/lib is not something useful. AFAIK there aren't any currently.

Definitively, after removing by QA, packaging level must improve consistently to be accepted again in main.

[hamish]

Hi,

glad to see that progress is being made.

​https://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/log/trunk/qgis/debian/changelog

any guidance on how we should sync DebianGIS's svn[1] with QGIS's[2]?

[1] ​http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-grass/packages/qgis/trunk/debian/

[2] ​https://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/browser/trunk/qgis/debian/

maybe we could automatically pull one from the other using svn:externals?

​http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn.advanced.externals.html

or is it desired to keep them separate? Perhaps trunk/ could be pulled into DebianGIS's svn automatically but for releases we copy the files and then sync things by hand? ?

and what's with ​https://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/browser/trunk/debian/ If that is old/redundant/unused maybe it should be removed to avoid confusion and prevent newcomers from hacking on the wrong files. (my motivation to sync with the DebianGIS svn repo is to avoid duplicate effort)

please let us (the DebianGIS team) know if there and any issues or advice that is needed, or when you think things are in good enough shape for review.

thanks, Hamish

[pcav]

Frankie, I believe now debian files are in good shape. We are just waiting Lenny release to package qgis 1.0, aren't we?

[hamish]

Some discussion on the mailing list(s), early Feb 2009:

​http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.qgis.devel/5087/

Hamish

[pcav]

Can this be closed, now that we have qgis on main?

[hamish]

Replying to pcav:

Can this be closed, now that we have qgis on main?

That is friggin excellent news. Once again Francesco to the rescue, and once again I worry a bit about the bus factor and his workload.

Next stop testing & ubuntu(s).

Hamish

ps- we should sync or move away the qgis/ dir in DebianGIS svn if we aren't going to use it.