[needs-packaging] libgtk2-appindicator-perl

I'm not sure if we should be encouraging GTK2 appindicator use. In quantal, upstream no longer supports this and it's maintenance is only for the derivatives that still need it. Once the derivatives no longer need the stack, it'll be dropped.

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 7:37 PM, Micah Gersten
<email address hidden> wrote:
> I'm not sure if we should be encouraging GTK2 appindicator use. In
> quantal, upstream no longer supports this and it's maintenance is only
> for the derivatives that still need it. Once the derivatives no longer
> need the stack, it'll be dropped.

Hi Micah,

I see your point, but the new upstream release of Shutter adds
indicator support that relies on this. Shutter is fairly widely used
and there are blog posts all over and threads in the forums and
AskUbuntu where users are fighting with its lack of indicator support
(see bug #805464). Generally the advise to users is to use gsettings
to add it to the systray white list, something else we probably don't
want to encourage.

Do you think I should bring this up on list?

Well, if that's the case, go ahead and put it in, but just keep in mind, that when the time comes (and it might be a while for Xfce), it'll be dropped with the GTK2 indicator stack.

Do you have a second reviewer yet?

Not yet. I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look at the attached branch if you get a chance. It's pretty standard, created initially with 'dh-make-perl --cpan Gtk2::AppIndicator' The only thing I do besides bumping the Standards-Version, compat, and other typical things is override dh_auto_test so the test can get called with xvfb-run as it needs a display. There's also a small patch fixing a lintian warning regarding a line break in the man page that I still need to forward upstream.

Do you think I should add some kind of "deprecation" note to the description in debian/control?

I'll try to take a look over the weekend. Maybe there should be a README.Debian with a deprecation notice, I'm not sure there should be one in the actual description though. In quantal we finally have the perl GTK3 bindings, so I recommend suggesting that upstream work on a GTK3 version as well since upstream applications will be moving to GTK3.

A few comments.
debian/control:
Shouldn't the short description say bindings instead of extension?
The long description shouldn't mention Ubuntu as Unity is its own thing.

debian/watch:
Is CPAN the official place to download binaries, or is Launchpad? I would think a Launchpad https URL is preferable to a CPAN URL unless there's some other form of easy verification that the download is authentic.

debian/patches/fix_manpage_line_break:
would be nice if this had a link to a bug that has it reported upstream (not a blocker)

Otherwise, +1 from me.
The only change this needs to build in unstable is a build dependency on xauth (our xvfb package Depends on it whereas in Debian it's a Recommends). I'd love to see this go straight to Debian rather than to Ubuntu (or at least uploaded to both initially and sync'd as soon as possible).

Thanks for the review!

On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 1:01 AM, Micah Gersten
<email address hidden> wrote:
> A few comments.
> debian/control:
> Shouldn't the short description say bindings instead of extension?
> The long description shouldn't mention Ubuntu as Unity is its own thing.

Fixed.

> debian/watch:
> Is CPAN the official place to download binaries, or is Launchpad? I would think a Launchpad https URL is preferable to a CPAN URL unless there's some other form of easy verification that the download is authentic.

Makes sense. Fixed as well.

> debian/patches/fix_manpage_line_break:
> would be nice if this had a link to a bug that has it reported upstream (not a blocker)

https://bugs.launchpad.net/libgtk2-appindicator-perl/+bug/1033655

> Otherwise, +1 from me.
> The only change this needs to build in unstable is a build dependency on xauth (our xvfb package Depends on it whereas in Debian it's a Recommends). I'd love to see this go straight to Debian rather than to Ubuntu (or at least uploaded to both initially and sync'd as soon as possible).

I'm going to go ahead and upload it to Ubuntu first as Debian is in
freeze, so I doubt it will be a priority for any of my potential
sponsors. I'm already on the pkg-ayatana team. That should be a good
home for it. I'll file an ITP and push a branch to the team's Alioth
repository.

Thanks again,

-- Andrew Starr-Bochicchio

   Ubuntu Developer <https://launchpad.net/~andrewsomething>
   Debian Maintainer
<http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=a.starr.b%40gmail.com>
   PGP/GPG Key ID: D53FDCB1

libgtk2-appindicator-perl (0.14-0ubuntu1) quantal; urgency=low

  * Initial Ubuntu release (LP: #1032390).

 -- Andrew Starr-Bochicchio <email address hidden> Thu, 2 Aug 2012 18:45:47 -0400