[XML-SIG] xmllib compatibility

[Rob Tillotson]

"Fred L. Drake, Jr." <fdrake@acm.org> writes:
>   This is a clear problem with the Debian packaging; the stock xmllib
> should not be overwritten, especially since xml.parsers.xmllib is out
> of date (and likely to remain that way, and disappear).  The Debian
> package maintainer should be told to fix this.  (Is he listening?
> Does anyone know who does this?)

For the record, this bug is fixed.

When I initially made the Debian packages of the XML stuff, replacing
the standard xmllib and sgmllib package worked just fine, and to my
knowledge it continued to work.  I was not even aware that there was a
problem with it in later releases (the replacement xmllib falls back
to the old code silently), until someone filed a Debian bug report
about it a couple of weeks ago.

As a result of that, I removed the override of the standard xmllib and
sgmllib, and uploaded a fixed package to "woody", which is the Debian
"unstable" release.  I could not put it in "potato" because we were
already deep in the final stages release cycle, and this bug was not
of a high enough severity to be allowed in.

At any rate, anyone who has problems with this should install the
package from "unstable".  (Don't worry about the name, the python-xml
package doesn't depend on anything but python, and installing it will
not bring in other packages from "unstable".)

In the meantime, I am deeply sorry for the problems this has caused
and for any public shame it has brought to Debian.  I have taken
steps to make sure it cannot happen again (at least not by me), since
I no longer maintain any Debian packages for which I am not the sole
upstream author.

Deepest apologies,
--Rob

-- 
Rob Tillotson  N9MTB  <robt@debian.org>