Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:06:29 -0800 (PST) From: eps+pbug0611@ana.com (Eric P. Scott) To: ports@FreeBSD.org Subject: The truth about net-im/ymessenger Message-ID: <200611230406.kAN46TxZ000166@anna.ana.com>
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It's been deprecated under somewhat false pretenses. :-) The current port is set to IGNORE, claiming [it] "is a dynamically linked binary linked to old version of gtkhtml no longer in ports." PR# 91491 alleged "The Yahoo! messenger port doesn't work on FreeBSD-4.11," and submitted what I consider a bad patch: deliberately breaking things for FreeBSD 4.x users by "upgrading" to a 5.x build, without providing appropriate conditionals for 4.x users. That was a mistake... It turns out that on a FreeBSD 4.11 machine, updated to 4.11-SECURITY, with the latest ports and packages installed, the "old" ymessenger port (20020902) is still "good." There's just a small "gotcha." It seems, somewhere along the line, a couple of shared libraries were renamed. This typically merits a fairly inconspicuous mention in /usr/ports/UPDATING, instructing users to relink everything affected. Of course, that's not exactly helpful advice when you're dealing with a binary port. It turns out a simple libmap.conf file is all it took to bring a "dead" FreeBSD 4.5(?) executable back to life: # /etc/libmap.conf # # candidate mapping # [/usr/local/libexec/ymessenger/ymessenger.bin] libgdk12.so.2 libgdk-12.so.2 libglib12.so.3 libglib-12.so.3 libgmodule12.so.3 libgmodule-12.so.3 libgtk12.so.2 libgtk-12.so.2 The only reason this port should be allowed to die is there's an unfortunate bug in this version: your friends will always appear to be offline. It's fixed in 1.0.6.1--which was only released for Linux. While net-im/linux-ymessenger has a few "rough edges," it works well enough to be usable. The next time someone claims a port should be marked BROKEN merely because something "doesn't work" (or doesn't compile on 4.x), apply a little skepticism. It's often due to something fairly trivial. The Porter's Handbook doesn't adequately address this, but there are some important and extremely relevant notes in the FreeBSD Wiki. -=EPS=-
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