Hi Simon, On Friday, 2 February 2018 11:14 PM, Simon McVittie wrote: > On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 at 11:07:42 +0000, Hugh McMaster wrote: >> Freetype-config has been considered deprecated for several years [1]. > > By us, or by upstream?
Both. We considered freetype-config a deprecated legacy interface back in 2011 [1]. Upstream also recommend using pkg-config over freetype-config in freetype-config(1). In fact, freetype-config has used pkg-config as a wrapper since February 2017 [2]. > Is there a reason to prefer removing AC_CHECK_FT2, rather than patching > it to provide enough of its historical functionality for (I'd guess) 90% > of packages? Something like this should work (untested): > > AC_DEFUN([AC_CHECK_FT2], > [ > PKG_CHECK_MODULES([FT2], [freetype2 >= $1], [$2], m4_if([$3], [], [:], > [$3])) > ]) > > (This doesn't do the sanity-checks that current AC_CHECK_FT2 does, > and it respects PKG_CONFIG_PATH instead of --with-ft-prefix, > --with-ft-exec-prefix and FT_CONFIG, but this shouldn't matter most of > the time; and it seems better if simple packages still compile than if > they don't.) codesearch.debian.net shows 26 packages referencing AC_CHECK_FT2. > Does Freetype's upstream developer consider AC_CHECK_FT2 to be deprecated > too? Not as far as I can tell. That said, I'm not against patching the m4 macro to use PKG_CHECK_MODULES if you believe it will be useful. > If we ask the upstream developers of various packages to make a change > because otherwise their package won't compile on Debian, some of them > will say "well, that's Debian's fault for removing APIs provided by > Freetype's upstream developer" and do nothing. If we ask them to make a > change because Freetype upstream has officially deprecated the macro/tool > they're using, or because otherwise their package (eventually) won't > compile against newer upstream Freetype releases, it seems more likely > to happen. > > Not carrying long-term patches to the build systems of a large number of > packages seems a good goal. Good point. I'll file a bug upstream to ask them to drop freetype-config. In the meantime, I'll do the mass bug filing for Debian. [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=642354#10 [2] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/freetype/freetype2.git/commit/builds/unix/freetype-config.in?id=1c513fbb8872bfac5631964963b6a751169a1ce6