[Pkg-electronics-devel] Bug#834247: marked as done (ngspice is configured with --with-editline, --with-readline would work better)

[Carsten Schoenert]

Hello Felix,

Am 14.10.18 um 05:07 schrieb Felix Salfelder:
> Dear Carsten.
> 
> It seems, now ngspice is configured --with-readline, reverting a change in
> ngspice 24-1.
> 
>   * Change readline dependency to libedit-dev

ngspice is providing a configure option to use readline which is applied
to the configuration of ngspice.

https://salsa.debian.org/electronics-team/ngspice/blob/debian/sid/debian/rules#L24

> I couldn't find an explanation for why this is possible now, there's only the
> old paragraph from 2003
> 
> """
>     Added Andrew Veliath patch for readline support. Using
>     readline with ngspice IS A VIOLATION OF GPL LICENSE, you
>     have been warned. The final decision is up to you. The
>     patch has been applied in the perspective of changing
>     readline library with libedit. Libedit aims to be a
>     replacement of readline and is covered by BSD license.
>     Libedit is available at the URL: libedit.sourceforge.net.
> """
> 
> in ngspice/ChangeLog.

I don't know these rather old and historical things, looking at the
copyright file for the readline package I can't see why using the
configuration with readline support should be a violation of the GPL as
readline itself is licensed with GPL3+.

https://sources.debian.org/src/readline/7.0-5/debian/copyright/

Given that readline is also available in main I wouldn't expect any
legal problems.

Are there any technical things why we shouldn't use readline here? Using
libedit also needs ncurses5 as build and later as package dependencies.

> Could you please explain what has changed since then? Apologies, if i am
> missing something obvious.

I don't know if something has changed here, I only know the current
cirumstances and there I don't see reasons not to use readline.

BTW: Any reason why this thing comes now to topic and not after this bug
report was created?

-- 
Regards
Carsten Schoenert