[Expat-discuss] Time for a new release?

[Daniel Leidert]

Am Sonntag, den 18.01.2009, 09:45 -0800 schrieb Dan Nicholson:
> On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 8:02 AM, Karl Waclawek <karl at waclawek.net> wrote:
> > Dan Nicholson wrote:
> >>
> >> Well, I wrote the pkg-config patch, and I'm involved in a lot of
> >> different projects helping with packaging. pkg-config is really
> >> helpful for another project that wants to depend on expat. A lot of
> >> Linux distros already ship an expat pkg-config file.
> >>
> >> I haven't tried to build expat from CVS in a while, but I don't recall
> >> there being any problems on Linux. I'll make sure that it still works,
> >> though, and send patches for anything wrong I see.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > OK, sounds good.
> 
> Just tried the build again on Linux x86 and x86_64. Everything seemed
> fine. I had a look at fedora and debian's expat packages. Here are
> some patches they're applying:
> 
> http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewvc/rpms/expat/devel/expat-1.95.8-pedantic.patch?view=markup
> http://patch-tracking.debian.net/package/expat/2.0.1-4
> 
> I cc'd the package maintainers (at least, who I think they are), to
> see if they have any specific input on those patches.

Of course I will do. I first mention the patch, followed by a short
explanation and the related Debian bug report (the same information can
also be found in the patch headers).

http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/debian-xml-sgml/packages/expat/trunk/debian/patches/82763_xmlwf_error_out_2.dpatch?op=file&rev=0&sc=0

xmlwf exits with status zero in case of an error. It is common to error
out with a non-zero exit status. The patch simply makes the application
exit with status 2 in case of an error.
http://bugs.debian.org/82763

http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/debian-xml-sgml/packages/expat/trunk/debian/patches/302191_install_expat_config_h.dpatch?op=file&rev=0&sc=0

It seems, some projects (python-4suite) reference the expat_config.h
header file. The patch simply adds this file to be installed. I'm *not*
sure, that this patch should be accepted upstream. It might be an error
to reference expat_config.h in a software source. You should check (I
can do this too in a few days), why python-4suite references this header
file. Maybe moving some declarations to the installed header files is
the solution to go.
http://bugs.debian.org/302191

http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/debian-xml-sgml/packages/expat/trunk/debian/patches/342684_libtoolize.dpatch?op=file&rev=0&sc=0

If you use some recent autotools, you can probably safely ignore this
patch. It simply runs the autotools chain on the source to get a newer
libtool version to support GNU/kFreeBSD.
http://bugs.debian.org/342684
http://bugs.debian.org/439127

http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/debian-xml-sgml/packages/expat/trunk/debian/patches/412786_xmlwf_man_standard_fix.dpatch?op=file&rev=0&sc=0

The SGML file contains a linebreak followed by three dots and and
parenthesis. The manual page contains the same linebreak. So the next
line in the manual page starts with the dots. But a leading dot has a
special meaning. GROFF expects a macro or request name after the dot. So
it throws a warning and doesn't print these four characters in the
resulting manual page. The patch simply removes the linebreak as an easy
solution to the problem.

The second part of the patch removes a wrong statement in the BUGS
section. There you state, that the XML standard requires the XML
declaration for well-formedness. But that's not true. The declaration is
optional, as you can see here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml-20060816/#NT-prolog
http://bugs.debian.org/412786

http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/debian-xml-sgml/packages/expat/trunk/debian/patches/485129_fix_underquotation_in_m4.dpatch?op=file&rev=0&sc=0

In expat.m4 the AM_WITH_EXPAT macro is underquoted. See the paragraph
starting with "Starting with Automake 1.8, aclocal will warn about all
underquoted calls to AC_DEFUN [..]":
http://sources.redhat.com/automake/automake.html#Extending-aclocal
http://bugs.debian.org/485129

The patch is trivial and safe.



If you have any further questions or comments about the patches, please
don't hesitate to contact me.


PS: There is still an open bug report, you maybe want to comment/fix:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=245840
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=23;bug=245840

Regards, Daniel