file dependencies and packages and [blocker] bugs

[Hans de Goede]

Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede <at> hhs.nl> writes:
>> Erm, yes and our mantra is upstream, and most of these apps are portable 
>> (using SDL + SDL_ttf for example), how am I going to get this upstream, 
> 
> We can carry patches for distro integration, and IMHO this is such a patch. 
> Several game packages have patches to support setgid privilege dropping

Which I always wrap in #ifdef __unix__ and send upstream.

> I 
> don't see why this would be handled differently, especially if it's only as 
> short as the snippet Bill Nottingham posted.
> 

Ah yes, and I wonder if anyone notices that of the 2 packages currently listed 
as having font filedeps one was sdljava-demos, so were is the java wrapper for 
fontconfig, and where is the same snippet in java?

Also in the short incomplete list of games which should really be fixed to stop 
including their own private copies of fonts, there also was hedgewars, which is 
written in pascal. And when I do a full audit for packages using private copies 
of fonts and opening these by filename, I'm pretty sure one or two python 
packages will pop up too, oh and we are even shipping games written in perl!

I'm currently not even considering taking patches for this, let alone writing 
them myself. The pain just isn't worth the gain. Esp. since the fix is easy, if 
this is the only exception to the no filedeps outside /etc and the bin dirs 
rule, then add files under /usr/share/fonts to the filelist in the standard 
metadata, that is a centralized fix, as in change one package and have it fixed 
everywhere.

>> Really this is not a problem of the apps, people should stop thinking 
>> about this as being a problem of the apps, there are just too many apps 
>> doing this, this should be fixed centrally.
> 
> That's what fontconfig is doing.
> 

No having to patch a zillion packages is not a centralized fix, atleast not in 
my world view.

Regards,

Hans