Comments regarding timbl_6.4.4-2_i386.changes

[Joost van Baal-Ilić]

Hi,

TL;DR: FYI: I'm still working on getting the recent ticcutils, libfolia, ucto,
timbl, timblserver and mbt packages (a.o.) into testing.

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 11:23:16AM +0200, Luca Falavigna wrote:
> 2013/5/27 Ko van der Sloot <Ko.vanderSloot at uvt.nl>:
> >On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 10:36:48AM +0000, Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
> >>
> >> is the versioned -dev package needed (i.e. do you really need
> >> libtimbl4-dev or
> >> would libtimbl-dev work as well)?

> > Well, the previous version was called libtimbl3-dev.
> > There were a lot of changes in the software, so incrementing to 4 seemed
> > a good plan.
> 
> Is API stable enough, or does it change every new upstream version?
> This is basically the major reason of using a versioned -dev package.

I see.  So, if I understand it correctly:

* aPi change *
source package een 1.2.3 builds libeen0 and libeen0-dev
source package een 1.3.0 builds libeen1 and libeen1-dev

* aBi change *
source package twee 1.2.3 builds libtwee0 and libtwee-dev
source package twee 1.3.0 builds libtwee1 and libtwee-dev

* implementation change, same abi and abi *
source package drie 1.2.3 builds libdrie0 and libdrie-dev
source package drie 1.3.0 builds libdrie0 and libdrie-dev

Upstream author Ko van der Sloot told me the API is pretty stable; the "lot of
changes" did cause a change of ABI only, plans are to keep backwards
compatibility.  Therefore, going for unversioned -dev packages seems like a
good idea.

> > Changing the name will affect the dependencies of upcoming releases of 5
> > or 6 other packages too.
> > So if it is wise to change, it is better to do it now, I suppose.
> 
> Reverse dependencies would have to be transitioned anyway, so it
> should be better to do it once and for all, assuming the API is
> "stable".

I've been working on this.  I've changed packages ticcutils, libfolia, ucto,
timbl, timblserver and mbt, a.o.  (Exact list can be seen at
http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=ko.vandersloot@uvt.nl).  Current
situation wrt binary -dev packages is:

            testing                   unstable                  NEW
ticcutils   libticcutils1-dev/0.3-1   libticcutils2-dev/0.4-3   libticcutils-dev/0.4-4
libfolia    libfolia1-dev/0.9-2       libfolia1-dev/0.9-2       libfolia-dev/0.10-4
ucto        libucto1-dev/0.5.2-2      libucto1-dev/0.5.2-2      libucto-dev/0.5.3-3
timbl       libtimbl3-dev/6.4.2-1     libtimbl4-dev/6.4.4-2     libtimbl-dev/6.4.4-3
timblserver libtimblserver2-dev/1.4-2 libtimblserver2-dev/1.6-2 libtimblserver-dev/1.7-3
mbt         libmbt0-dev/3.2.8-1       libmbt0-dev/3.2.9-2       libmbt-dev/3.2.10-3

Apart from the packages mentioned above, mbtserver and frog depend on these
libraries.

I'll submit transition request bugs to release.debian.org one of these days.  I
am sorry for not following procedure, next time I'll ask first and only upload
after ACK.

Bye,

Joost