missing shebang in pdfcrop (and other texlive-related scripts)

[Aurelien Naldi]

A while ago, I wrote a simple python script calling pdftk and pdfcrop to prepare figures for inclusion in latex files.
If I recall properly, I used it at least on the last two ubuntu versions (jaunty and karmic), but I just launched it again on lucid and it was broken, complaining about a bad exec format:

  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 480, in call
    return Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs).wait()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 633, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 1139, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception
OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error

After some investigation, I realised it was just the the shebang was missing on top of the pdfcrop perl script, adding it solved my problem and everything works again!

On a jaunty install, the shebang is also missing, so I guess python became more strict (or less smart) somewhere between karmic and lucid.

According to this gentoo bug, I'm not the only one and debian is supposed to have patches to add the shebang, why ain't these patches in ubuntu?
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?format=multiple&id=289818

Note. this page has a broken link, has of today, I see the patch in sid and lenny versions:
http://patch-tracker.debian.org/package/texlive-bin/2009-6
http://patch-tracker.debian.org/package/texlive-bin/2007.dfsg.2-4+lenny2

BTW, the version in jaunty seems to be similar to the version in lenny (version number is 2007.dfsg.2-4ubuntu2.1) while the version in lucid seems more recent than the one in sid (version number is 2009-7ubuntu3). Does ubuntu diverge heavilly from debian for texlive packages?

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: texlive-extra-utils 2009-7ubuntu3 [modified: usr/share/texmf-texlive/scripts/pdfcrop/pdfcrop.pl]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-18.27-powerpc64-smp 2.6.32.10+drm33.1
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-18-powerpc64-smp ppc64
Architecture: powerpc
Date: Tue May 25 15:03:34 2010
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release powerpc (20091027.2)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: texlive-extra