[Debian GNUstep maintainers] Bug#676229: gnustep-make: should depend on a chosen version of gobjc, not just "gobjc"

[Yavor Doganov]

block 676229 with 673538
thanks

Wolfgang Sourdeau wrote:
> Package: gnustep-make
> Justification: renders package unusable

Yes, currently it is unusable out of the box in sid/wheezy, at least
on x86 architectures where gcc-4.7 is the default compiler.  You can
still build stuff with CC=gcc-4.6.  Or you can install the new GNUstep
stack from experimental.

> It is currently impossible to install a dev environment for
> GNUstep.

Right, we're in the middle of a transition period when GCC 4.7 is the
default on some archs while the current gnustep-base package lacks
support for the new ObjC runtime.

> Since this will likely occur again at each update of gcc,
> gnustep-make should depend on a chosen version of gobjc-XX and stick
> to it until all packages are rebuilt.

I disagree.  This was the case when GCC 4.6 became the default, and we
had a libobjc2->3 transition.  There was a considerably large period
of time when GNUstep stuff was in a similarly broken state too.

The solution is to coordinate the transitions (GCC <-> GNUstep), which
we generally strive to do.  It looks like this time gcc-4.7 became the
default too early (usually this should have happened when 4.7.1 is
released), while we (GNUstep team) were sloppy enough not to update
the GNUstep core libraries in time, for example a few months ago.

Apologies for the inconvenience, I hope we'll be able to fix these
problems soon; see http://bugs.debian.org/673538.