libungif to giflib transition

[Nathan Murray]

Trying to install e.g. icedtea-java7-bin in Ubuntu Hardy fails, because it Depends on libgif4, which itself conflicts with libungif4g and a whole lot of programs depend on libungif4g (see aptitude search '~Dlibungif4g').

A quick fix for this appears to be adding a "Provides: libungif4g" to libgif4, but that won't work for versioned conflicts (e.g. "libungif4g (>= 4.1.4)" for mplayer).

So, instead all packages which currently depend on libungif need to be changed to depend on libgif instead.

(Estimated) numbers of packages, which depend on libungif4g, splitted by "changed already in ubuntu" and "synced from debian":
$ aptitude search -F '%p %30V' '~Dlibungif4g' | grep -v ubuntu | wc -l
45
$ aptitude search -F '%p %30V' '~Dlibungif4g' | grep ubuntu | wc -l
36

Please note, that this already affects users in Feisty, which try to install libgif-dev, to manually build mplayer for example (which has been the original bug's description).

[Steve Kowalik (stevenk)]

This is due to libgif4 conflicting against libungif4g. Are you able to use libungif4-dev instead?

[Nathan Murray (yotux)]

I have installed libungif4-dev in place of libgif-dev.

After running the ./configure script for Mplayer it know says that I now have GIF support.

It is ok to install it this way but what happens when a package depends on libungif4-dev. The alternative method has worked for me. I have read up on the Debian bug and it seems that this is something that will work its self out in some time.

Thanks for the tip. It worked.

Nathan

[DaveAbrahams (boostpro)]

Same thing happens for me on feisty.
This is at best a really bad usability bug.