[Bug 202174] Re: Please update to version 2.6

[Ryan Pavlik]

Now replying to Daniel, who posted while I wrote this one:

AbiWord Common: This one is easy - in 2.6 we eliminated the difference
between the gnome and gtk-only builds of AbiWord.  The only difference
is now a configure switch for gnomevfs, and given that I have used an
AbiWord "non-gnomevfs" build on the GVFS FUSE fallback with much more
success than over gnomevfs, I have disabled gnomevfs in all cases to
provide the best user experience.  As such, there was no longer a need
for the abiword/abiword-gnome and abiword-common schism, and so the
packaging has been simplified to only have the single AbiWord package,
plus docs, plugins that bring in extra dependencies, and plugins that
bring in GNOME dependencies.

AbiWord Plugins - yes, it lost a lot of content because I have moved
most plugins (those that don't bring in large or unreasonable
depenedencies) into the main AbiWord package.  This includes ODT
import/export, OOXML import, and more.  The plugin/core distinction, in
most cases, is development-only, and should not be construed to require
separate packaging downstream.  In this case, we were getting a _lot_ of
bugs complaining about the lack of ODT support in Ubuntu's AbiWord while
it was in fact just that the abiword-plugins package is not an obvious
thing to install to get what is becoming essential file format support.
This fixes a host of Launchpad bugs and dupes.

plugins-gnome - Hmm, it should have a goffice plugin in it now, but here's the deal there.  Since AbiWord uses libgnomeprint since we don't have a Cairo backend yet, we need a 0.4 release of libgoffice.  In ppa18 I fixed this so it should have built and picked this up.  I see I somehow missed a change to the abiword-plugins-gnome.files list, and so ppa19 will have this plugin moved there.  However, I anticipate this package going empty or perhaps becoming its own source package in Universe for 2.6, because at this time, the only gnome plugins are:
GDA - unmaintained, requires an ancient version of libgda, not recommended for use
gnomescan - requires libgnomescan which is in Universe, and furthermore my initial build tests with it were not successful.
goffice - requires an older version of goffice which is in Universe but does in fact work.  To remove this plugin, just remove the libgoffice-0-dev build-dep and the plugin will disable automatically.
I did not want to remove it yet to avoid chaos in case we did get a GNOME plugin working and to minimize the number of "optional" changes.

Dev files: Yes, that's for the abiwidget embedding of AbiWord, used by
Sugar's (OLPC/XO) Write application.  After checking again with the
maintainers upstream, we don't want a abiword-dev package for 2.6,
though we will for 2.7/8.  As I believe there is work to have a sugar
emulator in Ubuntu, I did not remove these files in the packaging
process.

RE: Debian - from what I saw earlier in this bug the Debian maintainer
is MIA.  However, I'd be more than happy to work with that individual to
move this packaging work "upstream" so to speak to Debian.  Most of the
changes were in fact necessary, considering the improvements to the
build system and the application in general that 2.6 brought.  (2.8 will
bring even more - an entirely new, sane autoconf build system and a
essentially unified source tree, so in that case we'll want to plan
ahead and get a 2.7 in during the alpha cycle.)  I did my best to work
within the framework of the existing packaging, while ensuring Ubuntu
didn't miss out on the improvements brought by upstream during this
cycle.  I'd suggest that the new package is in fact simpler (make
install now does "the right thing" so we use it instead of doing a lot
of manual file copying prone to introducing picky packaging errors) and
easier to maintain, and I would have done more simplification except
that I know that such changes would probably not be accepted.  I do plan
to "stick around" and maintain this package, updating/applying patches
and ensuring that an updated AbiWord is in future Ubuntu releases as
well.  During the Intrepid cycle, I'd like to clean up the package more,
and during intrepid or intrepid+1 introduce 2.7/8 depending on upstream
release timings.  I won't be going away :)

Thanks for the feedback - I am pushing ppa19 right now with the goffice
fix.  Please let me know if any other changes are required before
sponsorship and upload.

-- 
Please update to version 2.6
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/202174
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