Hi fellow developers, I would like to introduce a few significant changes into Debian Tcl/Tk packages. Some of them have quite significant impact on their reverse dependencies which will need a transition, I think. The proposed changes are already in the experimental branch, so anyone could try and break things.
The changes are (I use Tcl/Tk 8.5 as an example, but the same changes are applied to 8.4 and 8.6 as well): 1. Multiarchifying Tcl/Tk. This means splitting out the libtcl8.5 package with libraries moved to /usr/lib/<triplet> and with common Tcl code in /usr/share/tcltk/tcl8.5. The same is for Tk (libtk8.5 is the new package name). This change doesn't cause any impact on the reverse dependent packages. 2. Renaming tcl8.5-dev and tk8.5-dev into libtcl8.5-dev and libtk8.5-dev respectively (the latter packages still provide the former as virtual packages to break as few packages as it could be). This change is not strictly necessary, but the new names follow the common convention for development libraries. Only 4 packages break because of this change. They either have versioned depends or build-depends on tcl8.*-dev or tk8.*-dev. (cableswig, netgen, tix, tkdesk). 3. Renaming tcl-dev and tk-dev into libtcl-dev and libtk-dev. Since too many packages have versioned build-dependencies on tcl-dev or tk-dev, I chose to retain tcl-dev and tk-dev packages (as meta-packages which depend on libtcl-dev and libtk-dev). Switching to libtcl-dev and libtk-dev can be gradual. Would adding a lintian warning discouraging to use the old names possible? And the last but the most significant change: 4. Dropping /usr/bin/tclsh and /usr/bin/wish alternatives. Currently, any tcl8.* package offers /usr/bin/tclsh and any tk8.* package gives /usr/bin/wish via alternatives mechanism. I want to drop it and provide /usr/bin/tclsh and /usr/bin/wish as symlinks in tcl and tk packages respectively (similar to python packages). This change is very invasive. It makes about 40 packages FTBFS, and I don't know how many packages will break silently. The problem is that currently packages which depend on tcl8.5 (or tcl8.4, or tcl8.6) assumes that /usr/bin/tclsh exists (and the same is for tk8.5 and /usr/bin/wish). Though for many of them (those which depend on tcl8.5 or tk8.5) the fix will be trivial - to change dependency to tcl or tk, which provide /usr/bin/tclsh and /usr/bin/wish symlinks. These changes will require revision for the Debian Tcl/Tk policy. The new draft isn't published yet. It's still preparing in SVN: svn+ssh://svn.debian.org/svn/pkg-tcltk/policy/trunk (Is there anonymous access to it?) So, I'd like to start reporting bugs on found FTBFS and #!/usr/bin/tclsh or #!/usr/bin/wish shebangs without tcl or tk dependencies. Then I'll upload the changed Tcl/Tk packages to unstable. Also, current stable upstream Tcl/Tk version is 8.6.1, but I wouldn't like to switch to it now because it'll complicate the process of removing alternatives a lot. But later I'd like to have another transition (switching to 8.6 as default Tcl/Tk version). Any questions, comments. Anything I've missed? Cheers! -- Sergei Golovan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-release-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/caoq2pxggdhzwm0z8dgd3zqoaepjdtofbk9l29b13vrdu_f0...@mail.gmail.com
