[Hardy, Intrepid SRU] alpine wants Build-Depends and Depends: aspell

[Geoffrey Thomas]

Binary package hint: alpine

BUG: alpine currently is configured to use aspell as its spell checking engine. However, since alpine isn't a build-dependency or dependency of aspell, spell checking in alpine breaks

DEVELOPMENT: This bug was fixed in 2.00+dfsg-2ubuntu2 for Jaunty. I'm suggesting that the patch introduced in that revision be backported for Hardy and Intrepid.

PATCH: Patches are in the comments for Hardy (http://launchpadlibrarian.net/24819523/alpine_1.0%2Bdfsg-3ubuntu0.2.debdiff) and Intrepid (http://launchpadlibrarian.net/24819529/alpine_2.00%2Bdfsg-1ubuntu0.1.debdiff).

I've also uploaded packages with those patches to my PPA (https://launchpad.net/~broder/+archive/ppa). If you check the build logs, you can see that ./configure successfully found aspell as the spell check engine.

TEST CASE: On an unpatched system, run "alpine <email address hidden>". Add some text to the body of the e-mail then press C-t, for spell check. Observe that the spell check fails to run.

REGRESSIONS: Potential seems limited, since there are no actual code changes.

====

alpine's debian/rules configures it it
  --with-spellcheck-program=aspell
which according to the changelog has been in Debian since 0.82+dfsg-4.

However, if you build it without aspell installed on your local system, ./configure reports:
  checking for aspell... no
  checking for ispell... no
  checking for spell... no
  checking for aspell... no
  checking for ispell... no
and then builds the resulting binary without spell-checking support. You can confirm this by installing alpine, starting the composer with "alpine <email address hidden>", scrolling to the message body, and pressing Ctrl-T.

If you install aspell on the build system before configuring, the build process successfully finds aspell, and Ctrl-T works in the resulting binary. I've only tested this on a build server in an Intrepid chroot, building in a clean environment and then after manually installing aspell, but I believe the same packaging bug applies to Hardy as well.

So, alpine's package needs to Build-Depend on aspell, so it's present for ./configure, and to Depend on (or at least Recommend) aspell, so it's available for use on the target system.

[Asheesh Laroia (paulproteus)]

You're totally right. I'll make sure the next Debian release fixes this, and it'll get slurped into Debian.

[Evan Broder (broder)]

Here's a patch that fixes the problem - Ubuntu can drop it once Asheesh updates the Debian package, but it would be nice to get this fixed in Jaunty.

Since it's a missing {build-,}dependency, I don't believe this needs a feature freeze exception, so I'm subscribing ubuntu-universe-sponsors

I've tested building with this patch under sbuild, and I've also tested that spell-check works in the package sbuild generated.

[John Dong (jdong)]

Agree with Evan's judgement -- Bugfix in nature, not subject to feature freeze; In universe and not in any CD seeds either for freeze.

Uploaded into Jaunty.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package alpine - 2.00+dfsg-2ubuntu1

---------------
alpine (2.00+dfsg-2ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Build-depend and depend on aspell so that its detected at build time
    and used. Reported by Geoffrey Thomas. (LP: #340993)

 -- Evan Broder <email address hidden> Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:26:13 -0400

[Evan Broder (broder)]

Here's a patch for a Hardy SRU.

[Evan Broder (broder)]

And a patch for an Intrepid SRU.

[Evan Broder (broder)]

(Marking as confirmed so the SRU team doesn't miss it)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package alpine - 2.00+dfsg-3ubuntu1

---------------
alpine (2.00+dfsg-3ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * Merge from debian unstable, remaining changes:
    + Build-depend and depend on aspell so that its detected at build time
      and used. Reported by Geoffrey Thomas. (LP: #340993)

alpine (2.00+dfsg-3) unstable; urgency=low

  * Add Barry deFreese's little patch to fix building on Debian GNU/Hurd.
    (Closes: #532533)

alpine (2.00+dfsg-2ubuntu2) jaunty; urgency=low

  * No-change rebuild to fix lpia shared library dependencies.

 -- Stephan Hermann <email address hidden> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:31:17 +0000

[John Dong (jdong)]

ACK from MOTU-SRU

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Accepted alpine into hardy-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Since this is more like a feature and not a critical bug, I rejected the intrepid update. Fixing hardy is okay, with being an LTS and all that.

[Evan Broder (broder)]

Fix from -proposed works for me on Hardy.

[Asheesh Laroia (paulproteus)]

Fixed in Debian. Please do a sync into Ubuntu!

[Evan Broder (broder)]

Asheesh - I'll request the sync as soon as your new version hits Squeeze.

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Asheesh Laroia <email address hidden> wrote:
> Fixed in Debian. Please do a sync into Ubuntu!
>
> --
> [Hardy, Intrepid SRU] alpine wants Build-Depends and Depends: aspell
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/340993
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Asheesh Laroia (paulproteus)]

Problem is, it won't hit squeeze easily.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=551900

I'd suggest just doing the sync sooner rather than later.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I agree that it's better to sync this package sooner rather than later, if the fixes are present now in Debian; that saves us from having to wait until it shows up on someone's radar for a merge later. There's no policy against taking syncs/merges from unstable if appropriate, the only policy is that we aren't *auto*syncing from unstable for Lucid.

So I've gone ahead with syncing alpine 2.00+dfsg-6 to Lucid.

Asheesh, in general it would probably be helpful if you could follow http://wiki.ubuntu.com/SyncRequestProcess for such requests; requesting this in a comment on a bug that's already closed in the current development distroseries has a high risk of being overlooked.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package alpine - 1.0+dfsg-3ubuntu0.2

---------------
alpine (1.0+dfsg-3ubuntu0.2) hardy-proposed; urgency=low

  * Build-depend and depend on aspell so that it's detected at build time
    and used. Reported by Geoffrey Thomas. (LP: #340993)
 -- Evan Broder <email address hidden> Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:47:09 -0400