[Pkg-crosswire-devel] ICU and stability issues

[Jonathan Marsden]

Matthew Talbert wrote:

> However, GnomeSword and BibleTime both provide their own string casing
> function for this purpose, both using standard unicode definitions to
> provide casing. So, as I've said, even if SWORD is built with ICU, it
> will provide no benefit to the end user, and may lead to stability
> issues.

I think it would be a real help in making this choice appropriately if 
we could get someone (you?) to create a replicable test case, where a 
libsword 1.5.11-based setup compiled with ICU reliably causes stability 
issues, but one without ICU does not.  Ideally the app used in the test 
would be a non-interactive command line tool, so we're not dependent on 
big GUI apps and users clicking on a bunch of things in order to test.

Likewise, I'd be happy to see someone (else) create a test case where a 
search fails when using the 1.5.11 library with ICU disabled, but works 
with it enabled.  Maybe this is as simple as

   sudo installmgr -ri X Y
   diatheke <some options here>

(But right now, I don't have a known set of X, Y and <some options here> 
that I know will act as such a test case!).

Once we have repeatable test cases, we can then either fix the stability 
issue with a patch at build time, or we can make an informed decision 
decide to build without ICU.  If there is an existing (replicable) bug 
report that has good info on this, do please point me at it.

If libsword packagers are going to get squeezed between frontend 
developers who say ICU causes stability issues and should be disabled, 
and others in the sword-devel community who say it is really does cause 
loss of functionality to disable it, so it should be enabled... then I'd 
like to see some clear test evidence, from both sets of people, to help 
  us packagers make a sane choice!  Is that realistic?

Thanks,

Jonathan