Bug#872711: ntl: Please link against gf2x

[Ximin Luo]

Source: ntl
Version: 9.9.1-3
Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainer,

NTL has the ability to link against the gf2x library, but the current version
in Debian does not seem to do so:
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libgcc1 (>= 1:3.0), libgmp10, libstdc++6 (>= 5.2)

Sage uses NTL with gf2x, as follows:
https://git.sagemath.org/sage.git/tree/build/pkgs/ntl/spkg-install#n112
NTL_GF2X_LIB=on

For some reason Debian switches this off:
https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-science/packages/libntl.git/tree/debian/rules#n28
NTL_GF2X_LIB=off

This was done back in 2011:
https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-science/packages/libntl.git/commit/debian/rules?id=bac15db8073856e14e20eaecdc5423eaf404cdc8
but I don't see a particular reason for it, so it would be good if it were fixed.

X

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'testing-debug'), (500, 'buildd-unstable'), (300, 'unstable'), (100, 'experimental'), (1, 'experimental-debug')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.11.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)