Intent To Package to AUR: qemacs-git

cmsigler · 2022-08-09 12:57:14

Hi all,

There are two pkgs for Fabrice Bellard's qemacs (Quick Emacs), both in AUR. qemacs builds from the v. 0.3.3 tarball which appears to be 20 years old. It has some issues. qemacs-cvs pulls its codebase from savannah.nongnu.org, but this is now dead as upstream.

Chqrlie, qemacs' current maintainer, has moved the working repository to GitHub @ https://github.com/qemacs/qemacs

I have a PKGBUILD that seems to work correctly and intend to submit it to AUR. Please reply with any reasons for opposition or other comments.

Clemmitt Sigler

Slithery · 2022-08-09 13:08:28

There was a comment posted on the qemacs AUR page about this issue only 5 days ago. The user who wrote that is also currently working on an updated PKGBUILD...
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=278596

It's probably best to give the current maintainer a bit of time to update their package first before you attempt to take it over.
No-one has flagged that package out of date yet either so they might not even know about the problem until this has been done.

Stefan Husmann · 2022-08-09 14:04:24

One of the problems coud be that new upstream did not do releases yet. So it is debatable if qemacs-git should be created alongside of qemacs and qemacs-cvs, or if it should replace a) one of them or b) both of them. If you choose the first option, just upload it. The other two options will require an action by an TU and should be discussed on aur-general mailing list.

cmsigler · 2022-08-09 21:48:53

Slithery and Stefan,

Thank you for the pointers. The new -git *should* supersede the current -cvs and therefore replace it, IMHO.

However, I am glad to see archdub working on a first time AUR PKGBUILD for submission! I will hold off. It's good to see a new contributor :^D

Thank you both again.

Clemmitt

archdub · 2022-08-10 19:17:42

Slithery wrote:

There was a comment posted on the qemacs AUR page about this issue only 5 days ago. The user who wrote that is also currently working on an updated PKGBUILD...
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=278596

I exchanged a few emails with Clemmitt about qemacs in the past few days. My email name is different from my Arch user name, sorry for any confusions. At the moment I don't feel inclined to upload a package myself in the AUR, so I am totally fine with Clemmitt or other people uploading one if it's ok with the community.

My intent with the comments I put in the AUR for the two qemacs packages is to highlight that:
- One package, qemacs [1], has some issues, which for the most part, I would guess are a consequence of the code base using compiler dependent code and compilers having evolved a lot in the past 19 years. If you want to see what I mean look for example at the API for modules in qe.h.
- The other package, qemacs-cvs [2], despite its name, is not really tracking cvs, as highlighted by MarcusE1W 4 years ago. The version in it is actually 7 years old, please see this commit [3] which refers to the version that is built by this package.

[1] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/qemacs
[2] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/qemacs-cvs
[3] https://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/ … iew=markup

archdub · 2022-08-12 06:19:27

I said that the source of version 0.3.3 that is used in AUR package qemacs [4] is 19 years old because the version string [1] shows 2003 and the most recent copyright notice is 2003 (example: [2]).

However I have since came across the release announcement for version 0.3.1 that is dated 22 Apr 2003 [3]. I did not find a release announcement for versions 0.3.2 or 0.3.3.

Also I had overlooked that the files in the 0.3.3 zip file are timestamped 3/2/2013.

The changes between 0.3.1 and 0.3.3 are small. According to the Changelog inside the zip file:

version 0.3.3:

- fixed HTML mode in 64 bit mode
- added C-x s save-buffer mapping

version 0.3.2:

- make the code compile again with recent gcc

My revised conclusion is that while the bulk of the code in 0.3.3, something like 98%, is 19-22 years old, there are some minor changes that could be as late as 2013, which is 9 years ago.

My hypothesis is that some issues in the 0.3.3 version are due to compiler-dependent code. We know that in version 0.3.2 Fabrice updated the code for a 'recent gcc'. What we don't know is what version was that, some LTS distros can have very old compilers.

[1] qe.c: printf("QEmacs version " QE_VERSION ", Copyright (c) 2000-2003 Fabrice Bellard\n");
[2] video.c: * Copyright (c) 2002, 2003 Fabrice Bellard.
[3] https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/q … 00000.html
[4] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/qemacs

Stefan Husmann · 2022-08-19 11:47:58

- The other package, qemacs-cvs [2], despite its name, is not really tracking cvs, as highlighted by MarcusE1W 4 years ago. The version in it is actually 7 years old, please see this commit [3] which refers to the version that is built by this package.

That is wrong. The PKGBUILD pulls from cvs. And the comment from MarcusE1W has not been understood 4 years ago becaus it cannot be understood: It is bullshit, as there is no GNU repo for qemacs. For me the PKGBUILD pulls a version from 2020. Neverleless it is maybe a good idea to drop it, but i already made my point on this.

Arch Linux

#1 2022-08-09 12:57:14

Intent To Package to AUR: qemacs-git

#2 2022-08-09 13:08:28

Re: Intent To Package to AUR: qemacs-git

#3 2022-08-09 14:04:24

Re: Intent To Package to AUR: qemacs-git

#4 2022-08-09 21:48:53

Re: Intent To Package to AUR: qemacs-git

#5 2022-08-10 19:17:42

Re: Intent To Package to AUR: qemacs-git

#6 2022-08-12 06:19:27

Re: Intent To Package to AUR: qemacs-git

#7 2022-08-19 11:47:58

Re: Intent To Package to AUR: qemacs-git

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