Synaptic fails to built with libept 1.0.1

[Jonathan Thomas]

Binary package hint: synaptic

The recently-released libept 1.0.1 includes a significant API change. The ept::textsearch class has been completely obliterated, and was replaced by a rather pathetic ept::axi class that can only get the path of the apt-xapian index and the timestamp of the index. Somebody will have to implement/rip the expand() function from the old ept::textsearch class in synaptic, and I would suggest that synaptic not move to ept::axi to get the index path and the timestamp. It's not worth it to link to a 384 KiB library to get a std::string and a time_t when analogous functions could easily be implemented in RPackageLister.

My library, libqapt, was also using ept::textsearch function. In fact, it basically rips off the synaptic algorithm for xapian search wholesale. :P

Given my predominantly Q/K* tendencies, I do not know enough about the buildsystems of the GNOME world to contribute a patch for Synaptic. I can, however, attach the diff of LibQApt's port from ept::textsearch to pure xapian. Basically, all that one needs to do is to make member variables for the timestamp and the Xapian::Database, initialize/populate them, then rip the expand() function out of ept::textsearch and slap it in the code somewhere.

Hope this helps!

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: synaptic 0.63.1ubuntu10
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-1.1-generic 2.6.35-rc1
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-1-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Jun 23 17:35:08 2010
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha amd64 (20100416)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: synaptic

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thanks Jonathan for the report and the diff.
Here is a patch against maverick to migrate to ept 1.0. There has been some refactoring of synaptic's xapian search code during the lucid release, thus making the move easier.
I kept libept because maybe one day we'll integrate debtags and popcon into synaptic.

I'll push it to bzr, as soon as I can (before the release of maverick :))