Ubuntu
pstotext package

ghostscript 9.22 breaks pstotext: Unrecoverable error: undefined in DELAYBIND

Bug #1762778 reported by Iain Lane
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
doc-rfc (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Critical
Unassigned
ghostscript (Debian)
Fix Released
Unknown
ghostscript (Ubuntu)
Won't Fix
Undecided
Unassigned
pstotext (Ubuntu)
Won't Fix
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I noticed after my poppler upload that the "doc-rfc" tests are failing

 https://objectstorage.prodstack4-5.canonical.com/v1/AUTH_77e2ada1e7a84929a74ba3b87153c0ac/autopkgtest-bionic/bionic/amd64/d/doc-rfc/20180410_090135_46f84@/log.gz

These tests basically zcat a ps.gz file to pstotext. It's this that is broken. See:

laney@nightingale> echo "" | pstotext -debug
GPL Ghostscript 9.22 (2017-10-04)
Copyright (C) 2017 Artifex Software, Inc. All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.

 *** WARNING - the DELAYBIND command has been deprecated, and will be
               removed in the next version. For now you can restore
               the behaviour by using -dREALLYDEALYBIND but if you
               require continued use of this command you should contact
               the Ghostscript developers. Commercial customers of
               Artifex should email their support contact, free users
               are encouraged to talk to us on the #ghostscript IRC
               channel on irc.freenode.net.

Unrecoverable error: undefined in DELAYBIND
laney@nightingale> echo $?
3

but downgrading ghostscript libgs9 libgs9-common to the previous version 9.21~dfsg+1-0ubuntu3 fixes it:

laney@nightingale> echo "" | pstotext -debug
GPL Ghostscript 9.21 (2017-03-16)
Copyright (C) 2017 Artifex Software, Inc. All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
QI 100 0 0 -100 0 84200
laney@nightingale> echo $?
0

Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :

Seems that Ghostscript has deprecated DELAYBIND. I really do not know what DELAYBIND is good for in Ghostscript and AFAIK it is not used in packages which I maintain upstream, for example cups-filters.

pstotext is not part of cups-filters nor an OpenPrinting project. It seems to be a free software project on its own.

I consider this a bug in pstotext as the maintainer of pstotext has to update his software to work with newer versions of Ghostscript.

I will not distro-patch the deprecated DELAYBIND feature back into Ghostscript. Closing Ghostscript task.

Changed in ghostscript (Ubuntu):
status: New → Won't Fix
Revision history for this message
Iain Lane (laney) wrote :

Till, would you please take a look and fix pstotext then please?

Your upload of ghostscript to Ubuntu broke a package in Ubuntu. I think that there is a responsibility of the uploader to take care of things broken by their upload.

Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)
Changed in pstotext (Ubuntu):
status: New → Won't Fix
Changed in doc-rfc (Ubuntu):
status: New → In Progress
importance: Undecided → High
importance: High → Critical
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :

Switched the autopkgtest of doc-rfc from pstotext to Ghostscript's ps2txt.

pstotext is unmaintained upstream for years and so one cannot expect a fix for Ghostscript compatibility on it. ps2txt is part of Ghostscript and so kept compatible with the Ghostscript it comes with by the Ghostscript upstream maintainers.

pstotext is only used by dhelp and nothing else. It is used in the autopkgtest of doc-rfc to assure dhelp compatibility.

Switching the pstotext command lines to ps2txt also in dhelp eliminates the need of pstotext altogether.

Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in ghostscript (Debian):
status: Unknown → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package doc-rfc - 20170121-1ubuntu1

---------------
doc-rfc (20170121-1ubuntu1) bionic; urgency=medium

  * In the autopkgtest replaced the call of pstotext by ps2txt
    as pstotext upstream is unmaintained for years and stopped
    working with Ghostscript whereas ps2txt is part of ghostscript
    (LP: #1762778).

 -- Till Kamppeter <email address hidden> Thu, 12 Apr 2018 12:08:58 +0200

Changed in doc-rfc (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in ghostscript (Debian):
status: Confirmed → Won't Fix
Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in ghostscript (Debian):
status: Won't Fix → Fix Released
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