mcpp eating last character of words - this breaks xrdb

[divVerent]

Binary package hint: mcpp

Note: this is not a duplicate of #33728, it is a new bug.

mcpp, when used with the -@old option like xrdb does, cuts off the last character of every but the last word in each line.

This breaks files like .Xresources:

rxvt*font: -misc-Atari ST 8x16 system font-medium-r-normal--10-100-100-100-m-100-iso8859-15
becomes
rxvt*font -misc-Atar S 8x1 syste font-medium-r-normal--10-100-100-100-m-100-iso8859-15

I see that the bug has been worked around by making xrdb no longer call mcpp with -@old (I noticed it during an upgrade, and xrdb hasn't been reconfigured yet when it happened). Still, mcpp is obviously broken, even when supplying C code:

$ echo "main() { return 0; }" | mcpp -@old
#line 1 "<stdin>"
main( retur 0 }

Assuming mcpp is a C preprocessor, this should not happen - this line is perfectly valid "old" C, and thus should be processed correctly by mcpp even in "old" mode.

Because the only program using mcpp has been reconfigured to work around this bug, I'd call this bug uncritical, but it should either be fixed or mcpp get removed and cpp used instead.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

mcpp (2.6.4-1ubuntu2) gutsy; urgency=low

  * Fix truncation of symbols in -@old mode (Kiyoshi Matsui). LP: #139910.

 -- Matthias Klose <email address hidden> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:01:34 +0200

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

> mcpp, when used with the -@old option like xrdb does,

no, xrdb does use mcpp -a

[divVerent (divverent)]

Correct, in gutsy, it does not use mcpp -@old any more. As said, I noticed the problem during the update from feisty to gutsy after the kdm restart because of a new PAM. Later, the dist-upgrade apparently replaced xrdb or changed its settings to not use -@old any more.

In Feisty, it still uses -@old:

polzer:~ 3> DISPLAY=:1 strace -fe execve xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources
execve("/usr/bin/xrdb", ["xrdb", "-merge", "/home/polzer/.Xresources"], [/* 29 vars */]) = 0
Process 29238 attached
[pid 29238] execve("/bin/sh", ["sh", "-c", "/usr/bin/mcpp -@old -DHOST=hagge"...], [/* 29 vars */]) = 0

But, as the bug is fixed now... it won't happen that the buggy version possibly enters feisty backports, or something like that.