How to handle upgrade of libnotify when cups-client-1.4.8 is marked as broken

[Sahil Tandon]

On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 21:33:00 +0300, Kostik Belousov wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 02:13:59PM -0400, Sahil Tandon wrote:
> > On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 20:30:59 +0300, Kostik Belousov wrote:
> > 
> > > On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 01:26:51PM -0400, Sahil Tandon wrote:
> > > > On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 11:30:27 -0400, Carmel wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > My question is what changed? It worked before updating "libnotify". Is
> > > > > "libnotify" the culprit or "GNUTLS" or something else and why didn't
> > > > > anyone catch this problem sooner?
> > > > 
> > > > The chain of dependencies during the libnotify update prompted the
> > > > upgrade of cups.  The latter's OpenSSL interfaces are explicitly
> > > > thread-safe, which GNU TLS is not.
> > > > 
> > > > > There appears to be a lot of material released lately that is either
> > > > > broken or requiring a considerable amount of manual intervention.
> > > > > Perhaps a moratorium (port freeze) should be considered until all of
> > > > > the outstanding problems have been corrected.
> > > > 
> > > > We are sorry for the inconvenience which is surely frustrating, but
> > > > freezing the tree because of this does not seem appropriate.
> > > 
> > > Might be, completely ignoring the option 'use gnutls' in cups ports,
> > > until it can be made working, will change everybody life to be easier.
> > 
> > What "might be"?
> > 
> > As already noted, the GNUTLS option now defaults to OFF and users are
> > warned (via the BROKEN construct) if it is selected. 
> 
> Apparently, this have to be written explicitely. Users, who upgrade
> their ports, are not presented with the configuration dialog. Using
> automated tool like portupgrade, all you get is a list of the failed
> ports. After that, user needs to start investigation, spending his
> own time and possibly time of the people on list.
>
> Ignoring or removing the option makes the ports upgrade without user
> intervention.

I am sorry users have had to "intervene" in managing their systems, but
rather than removing the option entirely, I prefer mandree@'s more
structural suggestion of re-prompting the user when defaults change.  In
the meantime, a note in UPDATING about explicitly disabling the GNUTLS
option for cups ports is probably appropriate.  I have copied the
maintainer in hopes that he will consider it. 
 
> I am willing to spend some more time describing unobvious points of
> this consideration.

No, the consideration is trivial and does not need explaining; I just
had trouble parsing your English.

-- 
Sahil Tandon <sahil at FreeBSD.org>