[Debian GNUstep maintainers] Bug#629477: transition: gnustep-base, gnustep-gui, libobjc

[Yavor Doganov]

Package: release.debian.org
Severity: normal
User: release.debian.org at packages.debian.org
Usertags: transition

We would like to carry out a GNUstep transition
(libgnustep-base1.20->1.22; libgnustep-gui0.18->0.20) *and*
libobjc2->3, ideally coinciding with the migration of gcc-defaults to
testing (or even better, before that).

All new versions of the core GNUstep packages are already in
experimental.  A routine rebuild revealed only 6 bugs, all of them
having a fix available now:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=tag&users=pkg-gnustep-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org&data=gnustep-base1.22-transition

The latest stable upstream release of gnustep-base (1.22.0) includes
support for the new (modernized) Objective-C runtime in GCC 4.6
(libobjc3).  About 3 months ago, the GCC maintainers asked us to
postpone any GNUstep transitions until libobjc3 is available in
unstable [*]; now the transition is inevitable because gcc-4.6 is the
default compiler on most archs.

[*] http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.gcc/37170


Expected problems:

* gnustep-base now depends on ICU and is thus tied to future ICU
  transitions.

* gcc-4.5 is still the default compiler on ia64 and sparc.  As
  immediate solution, I intend to add (temporarily) gobjc-4.6 to
  gnustep-base' Build-Depends; that way the packages will still be
  built with the default compiler (4.5), but the new ObjC runtime will
  be used.

* A few runtime bugs may pop-up as usual, and as per Murphy's Law will
  be discovered post-factum.  I hope we can deal with them in due
  time, unless there is a scary arch-specific issue like the hppa
  excitement during the last transition.  TBH, I am quite surprised by
  the low number of bugs so far as they hardly correspond to the
  drastic changes in -base.  It makes me feel somewhat uneasy; we're
  used to battle with a lot more problems.