[DebianGIS-dev] Bug#603470: Bug#603470: libmapnik0.7: package linked against broken external AGG

[Francesco P. Lovergine]

On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 02:15:00PM +0100, Sven Geggus wrote:
> Package: libmapnik0.7
> Severity: important
> 
> The current Version of Mapnik in Debian (squeeze and sid) has been
> linked against the AGG library provided by the system.
> 
> Looks like this library (2.5.x) is more or less unmaintained. For
> this reason mapnik provides a custom Version of the AGG library which
> fixes the bugs which causes mapnik to hang.
> 
> The discussion about this topic can be found here:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/mapnik-users@lists.berlios.de/msg02953.html
> 
> I know that the debian policy is to always use external libraries, but
> this renders the provided package more or less unusable.
> 
> Unfortunately I don't have patches for AGG to fix this without
> breaking the debian policy.
> 

First of all, the use of non-embedded libraries is not mandatory.
Many programs have similar problems and we have to coexists with
them, unfortunately. If a patch can be provided (upstream or not)
to fix system-wide issues and is not, it is unfortunate, but it 
happens.

That said, the AGG case is quite unfortunate, because AGG 2.5
is GPL2 and AGG 2.4 is MIT licensed. That implies that the 
whole mapnik should be considered GPL-2 released and that
should be noted. This is also something bad, because it
violates the original upstream will IMHO. Note also that
the embedded copy is a 2.3 or 2.4 version, and we used
the same approach for mapserver to avoid those kind
of problems. 

Seriously someone should consider an AGG fork from 2.4
which is something maybe mapserver folks already did.

My best guessing is moving to the embedded copy 
if resulting issues are grave enough to compromise
its use. 

Maybe David can help about that.

-- 
Francesco P. Lovergine