[Pkg-kde-extras] Bug#971879: Bug#971879: gthumb: "charset=Ascii" appears before the comment of the image

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2020-11-12 22:48:32 +0100, Pino Toscano wrote:
> This is not how SONAME works, especially in a binary distro like Debian.
> Even assuming an SONAME bump is due (which IMHO is not), the consequence
> will be:
> 1) the SONAME of the library is bumped, either by upstream or in Debian
> 2) the Debian package is renamed
> 3) exiv2 will go through NEW
> 4) there will be a new exiv2 transition, and all the packages using the
>    exiv2 library will be rebuilt anyway (including gthumb)
> 5) we are back to the same situation

Not really. The applications should notice the change of the API via
their testsuites (if the build does not fail in the first place),
because they do not get the expected result. So, what happens in
practice is that both versions of the library are coinstallable, and
applications that do not support the new API yet can still use the old
library until support is added. Now, it appears that in the particular
case of gthumb, its testsuite does not detect the issue. :( I don't
know about the other applications, though.

> This is a behaviour change of the API, and IMHO there are two only
> options:
> a) restore the old behaviour, optionally adding a new API if needed
> b) adapt the applications to the new behaviour of the API
> 
> Considering that it seems a wanted change by upstream, then I don't
> see (a) happening, so (b) seems to me the only alternative. Sure,
> it is not nice, but meh, not something else to do.
> 
> Because of the above, Vincent, what about closing this bug, since there
> is nothing actionable in exiv2?

I think that the best workaround is to temporarily restore the old
behavior until the applications support both the old one and the
new one.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)