Developers of Sympa

[David Verdin <address@concealed>]

Hi Guillaume,

Sure we're interested! As far as maintainability of packages is eased, 
we like it!
We didn't react to your mail so far because we were deep in sympa 5.4 
preparation. But as far as it's over, we will apply your patches to the 
trunk.

Regards,

Guillaume Rousse a écrit :
> Guillaume Rousse a écrit :
>   
> > Here is a fixed subset of previous patch, dealing with doc directory
> > only.
> >     
> And the corresponding one for the src subdirectory is way too complex to
> be understandable...
>
> BTW, is there any interest for this work ? Given the amount received
> sofar, I'm a bit skeptic. I should have begun with the list of problems
> with current sympa installation procedure:
> - the result is not FHS compatible (/home is not a software installation
> prefix)
> - the configure scripts ignore standard directories switches (--bindir,
> --datadir, etc...) and duplicates them as non-standard switches instead
> (--with-bindir, --with-datadir, etc...)
> - the configure scripts ask for variables, such as openssl location,
> which are absolutly useless for installation itself
> - the 'install' makefile target doesn't support DESTDIR= option during
> installation
> - the 'install' makefile target is not usable by a normal user, due to
> the usage of chown/chgrp commands
> - checks are mixed between the './configure' and 'make' steps (perl modules)
> - distributed archive contains generated files (man pages, i86
> executables, autoconf cache files, etc...)
>
> As a consequence, building and installing sympa in a FHS-compatible
> manner is difficult, especially for package maintainers who have to
> patch the installation scripts a lot.
>
> All of those problems could be fixed by using autotools correctly, as
> they have been designed precisely for this purpose. However, the large
> amount of legacy cruft in makefiles make it quite difficult to produce
> small incremental patches, while keeping the whole software installation
> functionning.
>
> Here is a different collection of incremental patches, applied against
> current svn trunk. Most are purely cosmetics, excepted patches 4 and 5
> by changing installation directories.
>
> I'd like some developper input to know if it's worth continuing this effort.
>   

--
David Verdin
Comité réseau des universités