libmirclient causes multiarch SDL2 headers to conflict with each other

[Mathieu Comandon]

libmirclient-dev makes impossible to install both libsdl2-dev and libsdl2-dev:i386 which is essential for anyone building game related software. Seeing mir not being used at all in any of the official Ubuntu flavors, I find it strange that it was considered an acceptable solution to break a common and important workflow in favor of an experimental display server.

It's probably a minor packaging bug anyway, multi-arch development headers usually don't conflict with each other.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.10
Package: libmirclient-dev 0.32.1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.18.0-11.12-generic 4.18.12
Uname: Linux 4.18.0-11-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu13.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Tue Dec 11 14:25:50 2018
SourcePackage: mir
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to cosmic on 2018-11-02 (39 days ago)

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

As you can see in https://packages.ubuntu.com/disco/libmirclient-dev they are actually not co-installable so it's not as minor a problem as you state, but it's certainly fixable.

[Mathieu Comandon (strycore)]

That's good to hear and would be very useful! :D

[Alan Griffiths (alan-griffiths)]

Isn't the most sensible way to fix this to change the libsdl2-dev packaging to depend on libmirclient9 directly?

I can't think of any sane reason to expose the Mir headers to SDL2 users.

[Alan Griffiths (alan-griffiths)]

On reflection, there are several factors contributing to the problem. Addressing any one of them would resolve the problem reported.

1. none of the Mir -dev packages are co-installable
2. libsdl2-dev should not depend on libmirclient-dev
3. SDL2 is being built with mirclient support on 18.10

1 & 2 have been the case since well before 16.04 and this issue has gone undetected. If there's a reason for /2/, it's a bad one. Regardless, we ought to address /1/.

3 is pointless and likely an oversight. I'm under the impression that SDL2 dropped mirclient support upstream, but I guess that hasn't filtered through yet. In any case mirclient lost GL support in 18.04 and will not support Nvidia eglstream drivers.

[q4a (q4a)]

My steps to dirty fix:
find libmirclient-dev_*_i386.deb in /var/cache/apt/archives
I have libmirclient-dev_1.4.0-0ubuntu3_i386.deb. If you don't have - find one in launchpad.
Then:
$ mkdir tmp
$ dpkg-deb -R libmirclient-dev_1.4.0-0ubuntu3_i386.deb tmp
// remove tmp/usr/include and tmp/usr/share (that files alredy installed by libmirclient-dev:amd64)
// remove this lines from tmp/DEBIAN/control
Breaks: libmirclientcpp-dev
Replaces: libmirclientcpp-dev
Provides: libmirclientcpp-dev (= 1.5)
// Then back to terminal:
$ dpkg-deb -b tmp libmirclient-dev_1.4.0-0ubuntu3_FIX_i386.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i libmirclient-dev_1.4.0-0ubuntu3_FIX_i386.deb

[petr timr (djtlumic)]

worsk great. thanks. anyway, this should be fixed automaticaly :/