Bug#764310: manpages-dev and libcerf-doc: error when trying to install together

[Eugen Wintersberger]

Hi
  sorry for my late reply - though being listed as a maintainer for the
libcerf package I did not recieve a mail from the Debian bug tracker. 
I am quite new to the Debian packaging world - so most probably I did
something wrong or forgot to regsiter somewher. 

Anyhow ...

On Tue, 7 Oct 2014 22:51:50 +0200 Simon Paillard <spaillard at debian.org> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Oct 07, 2014 at 08:38:03AM +0200, Ralf Treinen wrote:
> > Package: libcerf-doc,manpages-dev
> > Version: libcerf-doc/1.3-1
> > Version: manpages-dev/3.71-1
> > Severity: serious
> > User: treinen at debian.org
> > Usertags: edos-file-overwrite
> 
> Thanks for the report !

Indeed - yes - thanks for the report. 

[...] 
> 
> Several facts:
> * both cerf.3 and cerfc.3 are already provided in manpages debian package since
>   10 years before libcerf upload in June 2014
> * the function names are reserved for future use in C99.
> 
> Options:
> * rename cerf functions and manpages of libcerf (avoid use of reserved names)
> or
> * manpages-dev to stop installing cerf.3 and cerfc.3 manpages
> 
> * anyway, Michael, if you read me, I suggest you mention libcerf in the cerf*
>   manpages.

Just now I informed the upstream maintainers of libcerf about this. I am pretty sure 
they simply where not aware of the fact that these functions are already mentioned 
in the C99 standard. I am just not sure if they manage to change the upstream 
code in time to make it until the freeze of Jessie. 

I have not found cerf and cerfc in the documentation for glibc 2.20 so I assume that 
these functions would not be provided by the glibc version shipped with Jessie. 
Hence, I suggest to remove cerf.3 and cerfc.3 from manpages-dev as long as glibc 
does not provide this functionality. 

I am very well aware of the fact that this looks a bit like makeing this a 
sombody else's problem. However, in my opinion manpages of a package providing 
a particular functionality should have precedence. 

In any case this can only be an intermediate solution until upstream has renamed 
the functions. 

regards
  Eugen 



> 
> -- 
> Simon Paillard
> 
> 

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