It seems likely that Ubuntu will have to support/ship both PCRE and PCRE2 before long. At least some other distros (Fedora, Gentoo, Debian) appear to be doing that already.
As mentioned above, for packaging purposes PCRE2 is effectively a new project, *not* a new version of the previous PCRE. The APIs are completely incompatible, and the previous PCRE is still getting bugfixes and seems to be supported/recommended for existing projects that already use it. There are a number of largish projects that don't support PCRE2 and presumably won't anytime soon (e.g. https://bz.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=57471). So it seems unlikely that the whole package ecosystem will ever simultaneously support a single incarnation of PCRE, allowing Ubuntu to ship only that one. Already some packages don't support the old incarnation, and as mentioned above, it's likely that some will never support the new incarnation. ** Bug watch added: bz.apache.org/bugzilla/ #57471 https://bz.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=57471 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to gnome-terminal in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1636666 Title: [MIR] pcre2 Status in gnome-terminal package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Status in pcre2 package in Ubuntu: Incomplete Status in vte2.91 package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Availability ============ Synced with Debian. Built for all supported architectures. Rationale ========= Required by gnome-terminal 3.22+ and vte2.91 0.46+ Security ======== At least one open security issue, affecting Ubuntu 16.04 LTS https://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-security/cve/pkg/pcre2.html https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/pcre2 https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=pcre Quality assurance ================= - Please subscribe Ubuntu Desktop Bugs or Ubuntu Foundation Bugs (like pcre3) to this package. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pcre2 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=pcre2 Upstream tests are run during the build but there is no autopkgtest Does not have 3.0 (quilt) set Dependencies ============ Only build-dependencies are dpkg and debhelper. No other added dependencies. Standards compliance ==================== 3.9.6 Maintenance =========== - Actively developed upstream http://pcre.org/ Background information ====================== As the package description states, the older version of this library is confusingly named pcre3 in Debian/Ubuntu. pcre3 is already in Ubuntu main. Other Info ========== In the original release of pcre2 in Jan 2015, the author says this is not just a drastic update to the original pcre but a "new project". He felt free to change names and options. https://lists.exim.org/lurker/message/20150105.162835.0666407a.en.html pcre3 has gotten some bugfix releases since then (from 8.36 to 8.40 released Jan 2017) Some discussion of how it's different: http://www.regular-expressions.info/pcre2.html To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/1636666/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
