gbrowse autopkgtest failures (due to libgd3?)

[Bryce Harrington]

Regression in gbrowse tests are blocking migration for nginx:

nginx (1.20.2-2ubuntu2 to 1.22.0-1ubuntu1) in proposed for 5 days
    Regressions
        gbrowse/2.56+dfsg-10build1: amd64 (log, history), arm64 (log, history), armhf (log, history)

The failures are:

not ok 5
# Test 5 got: 'ERROR' (t/05.deferredrendering.t at line 124)
# Expected: 'AVAILABLE'
ok 6
not ok 7
# Test 7 got: 'ERROR' (t/05.deferredrendering.t at line 124 fail #2)
# Expected: 'AVAILABLE'
ok 8
not ok 9
# Test 9 got: 'ERROR' (t/05.deferredrendering.t at line 124 fail #3)
# Expected: 'AVAILABLE'
ok 10
not ok 11
# Test 11 got: 'ERROR' (t/05.deferredrendering.t at line 124 fail #4)
# Expected: 'AVAILABLE'
ok 12
not ok 13
# Test 13 got: 'ERROR' (t/05.deferredrendering.t at line 124 fail #5)
# Expected: 'AVAILABLE'
not ok 14
# Test 14 got: 'ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR' (t/05.deferredrendering.t at line 130)
# Expected: 'AVAILABLE AVAILABLE AVAILABLE AVAILABLE AVAILABLE'
ok 15
[3683] rendering error track: gdImageGd2Ptr error at /usr/share/perl5/Bio/Graphics/Browser2/CachedTrack.pm line 154. at /usr/share/perl5/Bio/Graphics/Browser2/Render.pm line 3703.
GD Warning: GD2 image support has been disabled
gdImageGd2Ptr error at /usr/share/perl5/Bio/Graphics/Browser2/CachedTrack.pm line 154.
Dubious, test returned 25 (wstat 6400, 0x1900)
Failed 10/19 subtests

Similar failures are seen in Debian's test logs for the package:

    https://ci.debian.net/data/autopkgtest/unstable/amd64/g/gbrowse/24477380/log.gz

This appears to match this bug in Debian:

    https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1014797

Which in turn is forwarded upstream here:

    https://github.com/GMOD/GBrowse/issues/64

No solution has been proposed as of this time, near as I can tell. Unfortunately, upstream seems to not be actively committing to the codebase for some years. Bug #64 speculates the problem may be due to some removed formats in libgd3; if true, then perhaps one option could be to disable the corresponding test cases?

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

The autopkgtests are passing now:

https://autopkgtest.ubuntu.com/packages/gbrowse