Help with php4-imap

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 12:39:02AM -0700, Ryan Thiessen wrote:

> I am trying to install the popular web application framework Horde on my
> Ubuntu server, but I am coming across some odd problems that seem
> difficult to overcome.  An integral component of the program, imp3,
> depends on php4-imap which depends on php4-common which is not available.
> It seems that in Debian Sid php4 is packaged as "php4-common" with a
> metapackage "php4", while in Ubuntu the master package is just simply php4
> and there is no php4-common package that I can find.  This makes any
> package that depends on php4-common to be uninstallable.

You're misunderstanding the issue.  php4-common was a new package added to
Debian's php4 after Warty was frozen.  There has never been a php4-common
package in Ubuntu, and nothing in Ubuntu depends on php4-common.  Ubuntu,
universe included, is entirely consistent in that respect.

Your problem is a result of the fact that the php4-imap module is disabled.

> My question is, why was this configuration changed for Ubuntu, and was
> any thought given towards a workaround for those applications that
> depend on it?  I am okay with rebuilding Debian packages for Ubuntu,
> but the php4 packages seem to be very complex and I don't want to
> replace them if the Ubuntu packager had a good reason for the current
> configuration.  Is my best solution to recompile php4 from the
> original source?

php4-imap was disabled for support reasons, and unfortunately, the
architecture of the Debian package is such that it could easily be provided
separately in universe (it was part of the monolithic php4 source package).

-- 
 - mdz