Request for testing/comments -- import of new dialog/libdialog

Nathan Whitehorn nwhitehorn at freebsd.org
Thu Jan 6 14:17:42 UTC 2011


On 01/06/11 05:09, Erik Trulsson wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 06:57:14PM -0600, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
>> As part of work on a new installer, I would like to update the base
>> system dialog and libdialog to the newer one provided by Thomas Dickey
>> (http://invisible-island.net/dialog/, ports as devel/cdialog). This is a
>> much nicer, fuller featured version of dialog that simplifies the
>> creation of new dialog-using tools (a longstanding impediment to a new
>> versions of sade, sysinstall, etc.), and is under a marginally better
>> license (LGPL2 instead of GPL2).
>>
>> Patches to effect the import can be found at:
>> - http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/libdialog-update.diff
>>
>> What the patches do:
>> - Replaces dialog(1) with a new version. All command-line options of the
>> old dialog except --fstree are accepted by the new dialog, and the ports
>> options framework continues to work without modification.
>> - Renames libdialog to libodialog (old dialog). The new dialog library
>> has a much more pleasant API than the old one -- which directly implies
>> that it has a substantially different API. Until sysinstall, sade, and
>> tzsetup are replaced or rewritten, we need to keep the old library around.
>> - Modifies sysinstall, sade, and tzsetup to link to libodialog instead
>> of libdialog.
>> - Deletes all man pages and examples associated with libodialog. This is
>> deprecated code.
>> - Installs new dialog library as libdialog
>> - Bumps __FreeBSD_version to 900030
> Are there any ports which link to the old version of libdialog, and if
> so, what will happen to them?

I could not find any, but the search was not amazingly thorough. The 
libdialog we had was entirely peculiar to FreeBSD, basically only for 
the use of sysinstall. Most external dialog-using things use dialog(1),
which is compatible, and those that don't require the newer version I 
propose to import.

> Why not keep the old version as libdialog and instead use a new name
> for the new library (libndialog or whatever) ?
> (I am not saying you should do this - it is a real question.

Since I plan to immediately replace dialog(1), and libodialog is 
immediately deprecated, renaming the old library seemed to simplify 
things substantially. Having libdialog under its standard name reducing 
the need for patching it, patching dependent ports, and confusion.
-Nathan



More information about the freebsd-current mailing list