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jack, curses and rpms

Gordon McMillan gmcm at hypernet.com
Thu Feb 24 17:58:18 EST 2000 
Juergen A. Erhard writes:

> I recently discovered jack, a CD ripping/MP3 encoding integrator
> written in python (cool, I can hack it ;-).
> 
> Nice program.
> 
> With but one problem... it needs a curses interface (yep, the docs are
> right about that, you *need* it).  Which in turn needs a patched
> Modules/cursesmodule.c (it doesn't work with the one in 1.5.2).
> 
> Okay, so I got cursesmodule.c from the CVS... tried to patch it with
> the included diff... which failed.
> 
> Huh?
> 
> So, I checked that... and found that I needed the cursesmodule.c from
> the Python RPMs.  I got that and patched it... and all's well.
> 
> Well, not really... the fact that the Python RPMs have a very
> different (at least in source, if not in function) cursesmodule.c is
> pretty bad.
> 
> Some call this fragmentation, some will call the Python RPMs a fork (I
> for one will do that).
> 
> This situation should be ended *NOW*.[1]
> 
> Bye, J
> 
> [1] Whoever needs to get together and talk should do so... to sooner,
> the better (and the later the worse).  Actually, this should never
> have happened to begin with...
> 
> PS: Of course, if the changes in the Python RPMs are to be integrated
> into Python proper, all will be well again (*when* that has happened).
> 
> PPS: I could yammer to the Debian Python maintainer to integrate the
> RPM patches into the Debian package... but I won't.  I really want
> *one* Python, not several slightly incompatible ones.

If the cursesmodule.c in the RPM differs from cursesmodule.c 
from the official 1.5.2 download, you've got a legitimate gripe 
with Debian. Presumably they'll pick up what you're seeing in 
CVS when it becomes the official 1.6.

- Gordon
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