The truth about net-im/ymessenger

[Lane]

On Wednesday 22 November 2006 22:06, Eric P. Scott wrote:
> 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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Great information.  Thanks for researching that!

Ugh!  I have struggled with /etc/libmap.conf!

In defense of the original responder to the original PR, (not so much that a 
defense is required ... just for further information, is all ...), according 
to "man libmap.conf" (on a 5.4 machine), 

"The libmap.conf manual page and libmap functionality first appeared in 
FreeBSD 5.1"

Probably the porter didn't take another look at it after seeing that 5.X 
offered a solution to his problem.

Just a guess.