Re: [Pan-users] ATTN: Testing is gone, all merged into master

[Duncan]

Petr Kovar posted on Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:03:33 +0100 as excerpted:

> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, 2 Jan 2012 15:43:21 +0000 (UTC)
> Heinrich Müller
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> Hi guys. I merged all the testing stuff into master. Feel free to test
>> it and leave bugs at bugzilla.
> 
> Thanks, Heinrich! I'm CC'ing the other Pan list, since there might be
> some willing testers too. ;-)
> 
> Quite a significant problem is that we are now requiring very recent
> versions of some components (GMIME_REQUIRED=2.6.0,
> GNUTLS_REQUIRED=3.0.9).
> So e.g. on Fedora 16, you can't build and test Pan without manually
> compiling and rebuilding some of the dependencies, because Fedora 16
> ships gmime-2.5 and gnutls-2.12. Not sure what's the situation on
> Ubuntu, but we'll most likely face serious packaging problems if we
> choose to release a new version based on the current master now. Any
> thoughts?

The GNUTLS requirements were most significant here (Gentoo), as the new 
versions are still hard-masked and apparently some headers, etc, depended 
on by the latest in-tree gentoo-shiped versions of various packages to 
build, disappeared.

FWIW, claws-mail was the one I had a problem with.  claws-mail-3.0.8 (and 
the various claws-mail plugins) all had to be updated.  Someone had filed 
a version-bump bug requesting 3.0.8 already, and I was able to test that 
it fixed the problem and add a comment to that bug mentioning that it'd 
be needed before the newer gnutls versions were unmasked, and the gentoo 
dev bumped both it and the plugins right away after that, so claws-
mail-3.0.8 with the new gnutls fix is in the gentoo tree now.

But that's going to be a definite problem on various binary-based 
distros, where the new gnutls version requirement will very likely force 
rebuilding a number of other packages depending on gnutls as well.

It's worth keeping in mind, however, that ssl support is an as-yet never-
version-released pan feature anyway, so people won't miss it.  It's not 
as if not having it will be a regression from the current version.  As 
such, even if users building pan themselves AND the various distros don't 
enable the ssl support for a version or two, because it requires a gnutls 
which conflicts with other packages they ship that require the older 
version, no big deal.  They simply don't get ssl support for a version or 
two.  Meanwhile, uploading and score-based-auto-actions are *HUGE* 
features worth the upgrade in themselves!

So I wouldn't worry about that one too much.  Just be sure the situation 
is nicely explained in the readme, release notes, whatever, so both users 
and distro packagers have some clue and can make a reasonable decision 
based on their own needs. =:^)

> Some additional comments:
> 
> When compiled without the GNUTLS support, there are empty rows displayed
> in the Edit and View menus in places where there are the appropriate
> GNUTLS menu items displayed if the GNUTLS is supported.

Hmm... tho I'm built without gnutls at present (no big deal here since 
gmane is about all I use, and I was still fighting with getting claws-
mail, etc, upgraded to the new gnutls last time I rebuilt pan, so I just 
built it without that support), I hadn't noticed....

But now that you mention it, you're right.  Good catch!

> if selecting "Send and Save Articles to NZB"

> In the "Select Parts" dialog

I've not tried those two...

> The Pan Preferences dialog is already too big to fit in a 1024x768
> resolution screen. So I'd take some of the advanced preferences like
> cache, autosave, language and system tray, and possibly merge them into
> the Upload tab, then rename the tab to "Advanced" or similar.

Yeah.  We have all these new features.  Now we need to reorganize the 
preferences to better fit them all!

I'll take that sort of problem any day! =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman