xlibs-dev Mass Bug Filing

 I mailed
debian-devel-announce about this back in November[0] including the
rationale for this decision. What this means right now is that a very large
part of the archive that build-depends on xlibs-dev will FTBFS, and as such
we have a lot of new RC bugs on our hands.

   Adeodato Sim=F3 has gone ahead with a mass bug against these packages.
The bugs are all usertagged by the [e-mail:debian-release@lists.debian.org] user
with the tag transition-xlibs-dev. A link to all the bugs is available
for easy reference[1].

   So how to fix all these bugs? The easy answer is that you simply replace
xlibs-dev build-depend with the individual libraries that the package
actually build-depends on. As I mentioned in [0], Moritz Muehlenhoff has
made a script available to help determine which libs are necessary. I've
mirrored this script[2] since people have had trouble reaching it in the
past. It should help you determine exactly what build-dependencies are
necessary. Alternate methods for updating your build-dependencies are to go
through your header files and determine which packages your #include'ed
headers are located in. Of course, using 'objdump -p | grep NEEDED' on the
binaries in your package can be of assistance too. If you need any help in
determining the correct build-dependencies for a package, please contact
[e-mail:debian-x@lists.debian.org] and we'll help you out.

   Another item of note for these bugs is that all developers are
encouraged to NMU packages affected by them. This transition will prepare
the way for the upload of Xorg 7.0 to unstable, as shipping this with etch
is a major release goal for the X strike force.

   The rules for NMU'ing to follow are the ones set by the Release Team in
their January mail to debian-devel-announce[3]: a week after the bug is
submitted, upload directly to unstable as a 0-day NMU after sending the
patch to the BTS. The NMU can happen immediately after you send the patch.
Please read the bug before doing your NMU as well, as any maintainer who
does not want their package to be subject to NMU for this issue should note
the reasons why in the bug.

   For those of you who are concerned about backportability of these fixes
to sarge, you shouldn't have to worry. All the packages that xlibs-dev
depended on are present in sarge, so adding explicit build-depends on them
shouldn't break anything for backports.

   If you have any questions about NMU'ing procedures please direct them to
[e-mail:debian-release@lists.debian.org]. If you have technical questions about the
proper build-depends or anything else directly related to X, please send
them to [e-mail:debian-x@lists.debian.org]. Thanks everyone!

 - David Nusinow

[0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/11/msg00022.html

[1] [e-mail:/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi]
ists.debian.org:transition-xlibs-dev&repeatmergedno

[2] http://people.debian.org/~dnusinow/xlibs-split-2005-11-15.tar-bz2

[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/01/msg00001.html