[Soc-coordination] Status Report of Improve Debian Port on Mipsel, Week 1

[Xilin Sun]

Hi,

In this week, I have been working on fixing debian packages which
build successfully with GCC-4.8 but fail to build from source with
GCC-4.9. These bugs affect multiple ports of Debian, including MIPSEL.  A
number of bug reports are already available (at
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=ftbfs-gcc-4.9;users=debian-gcc@lists.debian.org
). My patches are tested on 3 ports: i386, amd64 and MIPSEL, and I
have
uploaded patches for the following three bugs:

1. #746868: libopendbx: ftbfs with GCC-4.9
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=746868
2. #746844: fcitx: ftbfs with GCC-4.9
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=746844
3. #746836: cigi-ccl: ftbfs with GCC-4.9
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=746836

These bugs are caused by change in symbols support in GCC-4.9. The fix
is done through modifications of "symbols" files. As they affect
Debian ports including MIPSEL, fixing them will lead to improvement in
Debian port on MIPSEL. At the same time, fixing them is one good
practice for me to get more familiar with the whole process of Debian package
maintenance.

Next week I will submit bug reports and patches for more packages
with similar bugs, while more efforts will be put into fixing packages
that fail to build from source specifically on MIPSEL port (
https://buildd.debian.org/status/architecture.php?a=mipsel&suite=sid
).

Thank you.

Regards,
Xilin