prevu crashes on `prevu libxine1`

[Andrew Ash]

I'm trying to backport xine 1.1.4 from feisty to edgy on my edgy machine, and had prevu crash. I understand that backporting xine may be a very difficult thing to do, since it's used in so many places, but I think that a crash in prevu shouldn't be warranted.

I followed http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=268687 to install prevu and use it.

$ apt-cache policy prevu
prevu:
  Installed: 1:0.4.1-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1:0.4.1-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1:0.4.1-0ubuntu1 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

I'm attaching the output of `prevu libxine1` to illustrate the crash.

[Andrew Ash (ash211)]

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/prevu", line 146, in ?
    BackportFromAPT(sys.argv[1],DIST).backport()
  File "/usr/bin/prevu", line 86, in backport
    self.do_compile()
  File "/usr/bin/prevu", line 67, in do_compile
    raise ValueError("Build failed.")
ValueError: Build failed.

[John Dong (jdong)]

This is not a bug in prevu. If you look above, you will see the "real" error message from thebuild process (most likely a dependency that can't be satisfied)

Prevu "crashing" (printing a stackdump) is just the way prevu reports that a build fails.

[Andrew Ash (ash211)]

I see what was going on. It needed libpulse-dev.

Still, I think catching the exception and printing a message would be more user-friendly. Something maybe along the lines of "Prevu failed to create a package of _____. Check the build output above for clues to why it failed." Thanks

[John Dong (jdong)]

I agree, I'll get it to print out some friendlier error messages.

To make matters "worse", apport in Feisty is probably catching all these exceptions and annoying the crap out of users *shudder*

[John Dong (jdong)]

Initial fix is in this bundle; will commit once I get home.

[John Dong (jdong)]

Clearer error messages have been committed to the latest prevu.