[Pkg-tcltk-devel] Install a patched BLT version?

[Ole Streicher]

Hi Paul,

Am 14.04.2012 11:09, schrieb Paul Wise:
> I would suggest working with BLT upstream to get version 3.0 released
> so that you can depend on it. Please don't do embedded code copies or
> static linking (which is almost as bad).
> http://wiki.debian.org/EmbeddedCodeCopies

I know this: for the saods9 package I already packaged about 10 packages
which saods9 will depend from, with some extensive cooperation with
upstream where needed (and available).

However, for BLT the situation is more complicated. The development
seems to be halted since 2.4z, which was released 10 years ago (except
some fixes to get it running somehow under Tcl8.5), and there was never
a released 3.0 version. There seem to be a couple of nonofficial blt-2.5
and blt-3.0 versions flying around[1], but nobody seems to be interested
in continuing/coordinating the development today. Debian just orphaned
the 2.4z package a few weeks ago [2].

I have no idea whether the saods9 upstream developer did significant
changes on the blt code (he just told me that it is patched somehow) and
if an unpatched official blt-3 version would to the work here (since it
does not exist at all). So, blt-3 is the only remaining package in
saods9 (of ~20, [3]) that I still cannot replace by a dependency and I
see not realistic way to get it into Debian within a reasonable time (I
am working now on saods9 for three months).

Therefore I would think the best compromise would be to use a special
package with a private sao-blt3 version for saods9 until an official
version raises over the horizon. If there appears one, I could then try
to convince upstream (or do the patches myself) to make saods9
compatible to an official blt-3.0, and just then remove the private
version. The question is just whether it is worth to take this effort
since even I have no real hope for an official blt-3.0.

Best regards

Ole

-- 
[1] for example http://sourceforge.net/projects/wize/files/
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/664092
[3] tcl, tk, tktable, tcllib, tkcon, xmlrpc, blt, zlib, tclxml, tkimg,
tkmpeg, tk-html, xpa, tcl-signal, funtools, sla, starlink-ast, wcstools,
and zip where all included as (partly patched) convenience copy and
statically linked to the binary.