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Dralnu
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 12:58 am    Post subject: Package Removals without replacements. Reply with quote

Ok. This is getting old.

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161847

There is what spawned this thread, and honestly its getting a bit old.

It seems the treecleaners or whoever, are going through and cleaning out packages that have no viable replacement. Centericq is the only decent chat client for CLI, but it seems that due to a bug, they are going to remove it. Problem is, like I said, there is no replacement for it. I looked through net-im. There are several clients for individual protocols, but none that cover the major ones. Anyone who uses CLI for any decent length of time knows what a pain it can be to switch between ttys, or the annoyance of switching in screen.

Anyways, to get back on topic, is this a case of the standard "stick it in an overlay" cop-out, or would it work to, you know, mask the package, and leave it until either A) someone patches it or B) there is a decent replacement for it?
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PaulBredbury
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 1:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fix its security bug. See Debian's diff, for clues.
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Dralnu
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 1:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

PaulBredbury wrote:
Fix its security bug. See Debian's diff, for clues.

Again, I say - why not mask it and leave it until a replacement is found. I'm fairly sure when people find random security holes in most places, they don't instantly remove a package for it. There are several other packages in package.mask that are there due to security problems.

But, like I said, its very annoying when they remove something that has no replacement.
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Dralnu
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 1:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Seems there is a nightly cvs of it from 20060929. Seems upstream isn't dead.

http://thekonst.net/centericq/
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 1:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dralnu wrote:
Seems there is a nightly cvs of it from 20060929. Seems upstream isn't dead.

A "respectable" upstream would have patched the security flaw and released a new version, not a nightly update. And anyway, September is before the security flaw.

A "respectable" user base who actually care about the package (I don't care) would just go ahead and patch the flaw, especially when they're pointed at fixed sources.

Edit: Got the day wrong.


Last edited by PaulBredbury on Sun Jan 14, 2007 3:23 am; edited 1 time in total
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Dralnu
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 2:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

PaulBredbury wrote:
Dralnu wrote:
Seems there is a nightly cvs of it from 20060929. Seems upstream isn't dead.

A "respectable" upstream would have patched the security flaw and released a new version, not a nightly update. And anyway, 9-Sep is before the security flaw.

A "respectable" user base who actually care about the package (I don't care) would just go ahead and patch the flaw, especially when they're pointed at fixed sources.


I'm looking at it, actually. I've mentioned it in the bugreport. Depending, I may work on making a replacement. Needed something to use for a project to learn to code with. This will at least be a start.
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 2:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dralnu wrote:
I'm looking at it, actually. I've mentioned it in the bugreport. Depending, I may work on making a replacement. Needed something to use for a project to learn to code with. This will at least be a start.
Go Dralnu! ++
Don't forget Portage & Programming or #gentoo-dev-help when you get stuck.
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 11:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

steveL wrote:
Dralnu wrote:
I'm looking at it, actually. I've mentioned it in the bugreport. Depending, I may work on making a replacement. Needed something to use for a project to learn to code with. This will at least be a start.
Go Dralnu! ++
Don't forget Portage & Programming or #gentoo-dev-help when you get stuck.


I looked into some libs that could be used (ok, I just looked at libmsn). My thing is, I'd rather use C for this (thats what I'm learning, anyways), but so far it seems that libmsn is C++ only. I don't think it would case a problem, but what is the chance of that happening?

Also, I've never messed with libs before. ncurses and a few others will probably be needed, and I have no real clue on where to find the calls you need to make to a lib to get a certaint responce. Know of any guides?
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 11:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The thing with centericq is that the code is really old and needs a complete rewrite. Actually I'm thinking about a new centericq written in Python (which would make development faster, IMHO) but I can't do anything for the next two months...

Oh and by the way: the bug you mentioned is in libmsn and not centericq itself, so re-using the same library would not solve the problem!!

Edit: I should really go back to my english grammar handbook...
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Centericq also does not compile on amd64, and seemingly no-one is willing to apply a patch. It seems it hasn't got an ebuild maintainer anymore too.

An alternative is Bitlbee + irssi/WeeChat. Especially irssi has got plugins for tight Bitlbee integration, though I have preferred WeeChat over irssi since a few months (because it is maintained much better).
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

PC_Freak wrote:
Centericq also does not compile on amd64, and seemingly no-one is willing to apply a patch

That is NOT true, when I had an amd64 I was a happy centericq user...

PC_Freak wrote:
. It seems it hasn't got an ebuild maintainer anymore too.


This is the main reason why it has been selected for removal, I guess... I tried to send some updated ebuild, but without a mantainer that was not possible.

PC_Freak wrote:
An alternative is Bitlbee + irssi/WeeChat. Especially irssi has got plugins for tight Bitlbee integration, though I have preferred WeeChat over irssi since a few months (because it is maintained much better).


Yet this is a gateway, I used that with Jabber, but... I don't like it, I can't tell you why specifically, but I feel it... wrong...
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PaulBredbury
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 5:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kjir wrote:
I tried to send some updated ebuild, but without a maintainer that was not possible.

Post the ebuild on bugzilla. See link mentioned above.
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Dralnu
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

PaulBredbury wrote:
Kjir wrote:
I tried to send some updated ebuild, but without a maintainer that was not possible.

Post the ebuild on bugzilla. See link mentioned above.

The devs don't really seem to give a damn, so it would be pointles..

As for writing it in python, I'd rather try it in C. Personally, I think scripting languages are more useful for add-ons and making, well, scripts, but big programs (like a chat client) would seem to be better served by the use of a hard-coded language. A scripting language would work, but I don't like the idea of doing massive projects in a script.

Now, that said, I'd be all for making a basic client and setting up a scripted front-end in python/ruby. Make a basic library to handle the most of the client/server work, then script out the front-end for the display work.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dralnu wrote:
PaulBredbury wrote:
Kjir wrote:
I tried to send some updated ebuild, but without a maintainer that was not possible.

Post the ebuild on bugzilla. See link mentioned above.

The devs don't really seem to give a damn, so it would be pointles..

That's right, everything is already on the bugzilla since ages...

Dralnu wrote:
Now, that said, I'd be all for making a basic client and setting up a scripted front-end in python/ruby. Make a basic library to handle the most of the client/server work, then script out the front-end for the display work.


Well the Good Thing in Python is that you can write libraries in C and use them in Python... so, for instance, we could write protocol libraries in C and make a frontend with Python, at least in the beginning: high level languages are good for a rapid development, useful to understand what we need to do and how we want it.

As always, IMHO
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Dralnu
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kjir wrote:
Dralnu wrote:
PaulBredbury wrote:
Kjir wrote:
I tried to send some updated ebuild, but without a maintainer that was not possible.

Post the ebuild on bugzilla. See link mentioned above.

The devs don't really seem to give a damn, so it would be pointles..

That's right, everything is already on the bugzilla since ages...

Dralnu wrote:
Now, that said, I'd be all for making a basic client and setting up a scripted front-end in python/ruby. Make a basic library to handle the most of the client/server work, then script out the front-end for the display work.


Well the Good Thing in Python is that you can write libraries in C and use them in Python... so, for instance, we could write protocol libraries in C and make a frontend with Python, at least in the beginning: high level languages are good for a rapid development, useful to understand what we need to do and how we want it.

As always, IMHO


What would make some sense to me would be to build the protocol libs (maybe see about pulling them out of gaim or kopete or some other GPL'ed client) in C, release those as a libmsnp, libyahoop, ect., so that others could use the libraries to do their own work, then code a basic back-end for the client, then run the frontend as a selectable client (ncurses, ruby-ncurses, python, whatever).

Keep the code somewhat split up so that others could use it, just to save having such troubles like there are with making IM clients now.

If you could talk the KDE team into helping with the protocol libs, that would be awesome since chances are they know more about it then two random ppl would.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kjir wrote:
That is NOT true, when I had an amd64 I was a happy centericq user...

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117358

That bug has been open since 1 January 2006, and CenterICQ was finally unmarked as stable on amd64 over twelve months later.
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Dralnu
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

PC_Freak wrote:
Kjir wrote:
That is NOT true, when I had an amd64 I was a happy centericq user...

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117358

That bug has been open since 1 January 2006, and CenterICQ was finally unmarked as stable on amd64 over twelve months later.


Your point being? Other then my problem with libmsn, centericq has (and still does) beat the crap out of any other text-mode client in existence. It works for some amd64 users (there are actually a few threads stating that the AMD64 and Intels C2D chips are 100% compatable when it boils down to it), and those that is doesn't seem to be in the minority.

Just because one person filed a bug does NOT mean that that is the case 100% of the time. Hell, someone reported a problem with centericq crashing upon connection to yahoo - it never bothered me. Some people bitched about XMMS being a buggy POS - alot of us never had a moments trouble with it.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dralnu wrote:
What would make some sense to me would be to build the protocol libs (maybe see about pulling them out of gaim or kopete or some other GPL'ed client) in C, release those as a libmsnp, libyahoop, ect., so that others could use the libraries to do their own work, then code a basic back-end for the client, then run the frontend as a selectable client (ncurses, ruby-ncurses, python, whatever).

I agree

Dralnu wrote:
If you could talk the KDE team into helping with the protocol libs, that would be awesome since chances are they know more about it then two random ppl would.


The problem I always had with KDE libs is that they LOTS of dependencies and they take a great amount of time to compile, which is something we should definitely avoid for a text-mode client. Yet we should definetely look into some existing libraries... As soon as I get back my DSL I'll do that.

Edit: Again that English Grammar thing...
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was just noting that it didn't work on amd64, probably when using GCC 4.1 (as I do). It's not a single user who encountered this error, scroll through the bug's comments, there are many of them. In fact it only compiled when you took out all the USE flags, of course making it useless since you couldn't connect to anything.

Btw, you can't compare a crash that occured to one person with a compilation failure on a (nearly) entire architecture. (I don't know much about C and GCC, but there were typecasts that returned fatal errors while compiling.)

Ofcourse this was just a side note, Centericq's removal has nothing to do with this, but I wanted to note it anyway since I have been waiting months for Centericq to be either fixed or unmarked as stable. It quite shows it's unmaintained, thus I find it normal it is being hard masked and removed afterwards. Centericq's author should have taken the responsibility for fixing these bugs and certainly the security issues (the same case as with xmms). You can't keep Portage full of patches and maintain them for every broken and unmaintained package.

The best solution is a fork or a rewrite, just as it happened with xmms numerous times.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

PC_Freak wrote:
I was just noting that it didn't work on amd64, probably when using GCC 4.1 (as I do). It's not a single user who encountered this error, scroll through the bug's comments, there are many of them. In fact it only compiled when you took out all the USE flags, of course making it useless since you couldn't connect to anything.

Btw, you can't compare a crash that occured to one person with a compilation failure on a (nearly) entire architecture. (I don't know much about C and GCC, but there were typecasts that returned fatal errors while compiling.)


That explains why I was able to use it: it was a lot of time before the arrival of gcc 4.1, earlies versions compiled fine.

PC_Freak wrote:
Ofcourse this was just a side note, Centericq's removal has nothing to do with this, but I wanted to note it anyway since I have been waiting months for Centericq to be either fixed or unmarked as stable. It quite shows it's unmaintained, thus I find it normal it is being hard masked and removed afterwards. Centericq's author should have taken the responsibility for fixing these bugs and certainly the security issues (the same case as with xmms). You can't keep Portage full of patches and maintain them for every broken and unmaintained package.


Centericq is old and not mantained anymore. I am subscribed to the mailing list and nothing happens there. Some components (ktools) are very very old (latest release of ktools is from 2003), there are many issues which should be taken care of (utf-8 support, among others). Devs had no choice other than removing it from Portage.

PC_Freak wrote:
The best solution is a fork or a rewrite, just as it happened with xmms numerous times.


Yep, that's what we have to do...

BTW: I looked for some MSN libraries. There seems that the best choice would be libmsn. Yet we could borrow the msn lib from some other project; there is a good listing here:
http://www.hypothetic.org/docs/msn/resources/projects.php
Not really up to date, but useful anyway.
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Dralnu
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Could see about Gaim's protocol libs. It doesn't have many deps (if you set your USE flags right. If you don't you end up with a Gnome install), and should be useable.

Keep in mind, though, if it isn't in C, I'm kind of out of this :)
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You could use Gaim's libraries without much trouble, in fact this is what Bitlbee does too.
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Dralnu
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

PC_Freak wrote:
You could use Gaim's libraries without much trouble, in fact this is what Bitlbee does too.


Thats where I got the idea :)

May just use Bitlbee's, actually. lol
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.network.centericq/4252
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dralnu wrote:
Could see about Gaim's protocol libs. It doesn't have many deps (if you set your USE flags right. If you don't you end up with a Gnome install), and should be useable.


I agree, Gaim is well mantained and the libs should not imply any dependency. I had a look on Gaims homepage and there are quite a lot of protocols supported, so it seems the best choice we have.

Dralnu wrote:
Keep in mind, though, if it isn't in C, I'm kind of out of this :)


Then we'll make it C ;) I have to practice too...

Right now I am hacking with ncurses (in Python because it's easier), I have started to point out some of the features we should keep in mind:


  • Text-based (ncurses)
  • Multiprotocol
  • Really configurable
  • Localized


I was thinking about some kind of common interface for all the protocols, so to add a new one it would just be necessary to write a wrapper to a lib and attach it to the rest of the program. I was also thinking that we should start with MSN and ICQ and when we have something useable we could add more protocols.
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