[Debichem-devel] openbabel-2.2 transition

[Michael Banck]

Hi,

we know it's pretty late, but we would like to ask for a library freeze
exception for openbabel.

Openbabel-2.2 got recently released and is currently available in
experimental.  It revs the soname from libopenbabel2 to libopenbabel3,
but is API compatible.  

The reverse Build-Depends list is rather short:

  xdrawchem,libopenbabel2
  v-sim-doc,libopenbabel2
  v-sim,libopenbabel2
  libgcu0,libopenbabel2
  ghemical,libopenbabel2
  gcu-plugin,libopenbabel2
  gchempaint,libopenbabel2

Apart from v-sim{,-doc}, all of those are maintained by the Debichem
Team (libgcu0 and gcu-plugin are from the same source package) as well
and we tested those packages compiled against libopenbabel3 to make sure
they still work, so a small round of binNMUs should be all that's
needed.  

The main reason why we would like to have openbabel-2.2 in lenny is the
fact it is needed by avogadro (also available in experimental), a
killer-app in the field of chemistry molecule viewers and in particular
builders.  Besides that, openbabel-2.2 has very much improved python
bindings and better development support.

The first step would be uploading openbabel_2.2.0-2 to unstable, we got
packages ready, is that fine for us to do?


thanks,

Michael