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Bug 636546

Summary: app-arch/bzip2: Handwritten Makefile to autotools conversion.
Product: Gentoo Linux Reporter: hanetzer
Component: Current packagesAssignee: Gentoo's Team for Core System packages <base-system>
Status: IN_PROGRESS ---    
Severity: normal CC: sam, tsmksubc, vapier
Priority: Normal    
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
See Also: https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/pull/5707
https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/pull/9254
Whiteboard:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---
Deadline: 2018-10-14   

Description hanetzer 2017-11-04 18:59:30 UTC
app-arch/bzip2 currently has a rather convoluted and unportable
ebuild due to upstream using a pair of handwritten Makefiles in
stead of a more standard autotools setup.

Stanislav Brabec <sbrabec@suze.cz> has already laid most of the
groundwork in setting up an autotool package for it, and with
the guidance of Soap a git repo[1] was created with gentoo's own
bzip2 patches and the autotools setup incorporated in a sane way.

Both of my attempts to contact the original author J. Seward at
both jseward@bzip.org and julian@bzip.org resulted in the mail
bouncing back as undeliverable.

As it currently stands, without these changes to a more portable
autotools setup, using chrossdev to compile for mingw-w64 will
result in a libbz2.so which is actually a PE32 dll and bzip2
which is also a PE32 executable without a .exe extension.

In addition, changing the build system will result in a much
simpler and easy to maintain ebuild, and adds pkg-config support,
a feature which has been missing from bzip2 its entire life.

[1]: https://github.com/hanetzer/bzip2
Comment 1 Felix Janda 2017-12-27 13:02:39 UTC
Please also try contacting the upstream author at jseward@acm.org .
Comment 2 hanetzer 2017-12-29 10:10:37 UTC
(In reply to Felix Janda from comment #1)
> Please also try contacting the upstream author at jseward@acm.org .

Oh, nice. I had tried emailing both jseward@bzip.org and julian@bzip.org,
but both emails got bounced back as deliverable. I will give that email
a shot as well.
Comment 3 Thomas Deutschmann (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2018-09-10 10:50:08 UTC
@ Mike Frysinger: Please comment on that fact that new bzip2 package would lose USE=static. Is this a problem?
Comment 4 Sam James archtester Gentoo Infrastructure gentoo-dev Security 2021-03-28 04:18:40 UTC
(In reply to hanetzer from comment #2)
> (In reply to Felix Janda from comment #1)
> > Please also try contacting the upstream author at jseward@acm.org .
> 
> Oh, nice. I had tried emailing both jseward@bzip.org and julian@bzip.org,
> but both emails got bounced back as deliverable. I will give that email
> a shot as well.

Did anything actually happen with this?

There's a new upstream now.

(In reply to Thomas Deutschmann from comment #3)
> @ Mike Frysinger: Please comment on that fact that new bzip2 package would
> lose USE=static. Is this a problem?

Ping.
Comment 5 SpanKY gentoo-dev 2021-04-11 14:42:55 UTC
the bzip2 makefile is so simple & fast that i'm not sure what autotools gains us.  it looks nicer or something ?  it would certainly be slower than what we have now.

i would push changes to upstream at this point if it's a little more active.