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> because i usually use xpdf for pdf files and ubuntu dropped it FWIW, Ubuntu only didn't ship xpdf in 20.04. It's back in 22.04. Looking at the history of the

by rlpb 3y ago

> because i usually use xpdf for pdf files and ubuntu dropped it FWIW, Ubuntu only didn't ship xpdf in 20.04. It's back in 22.04. Looking at the history of the package in Debian, it looks like it was on "life support" for a while in Debian by people I recognise as Ubuntu developers, but then also got removed from Debian testing for the same reason. However Debian didn't have a release at all in 2020, so it didn't miss a Debian release like it missed an Ubuntu release, and a new maintainer arrived to look after it again after that so it got fixed in time for Debian's 2021 release. IOW, it was just a matter of timing of releases and the absence of a maintainer in both distributions for a while, rather than some weird Ubuntu decision. Having said that, Ubuntu does tend to focus on evince, so that would explain why it didn't attract a replacement maintainer quickly from the Ubuntu end. It seems a bit of a weird reason to change distribution over anyway, which is why I thought I'd explain the details :-)

kragen 3y ago
i have 20.04 installed here (should i confess that publicly?) and the absence of xpdf has been a irritation literally every day for months a more rational person would have compiled xpdf from source obviously
- rlpb 3y ago
  You could probably grab the next version that was published to Debian (3.04-14), throw it into a PPA to build against 20.04 and it would probably work. People have also published this kind of thing as an update in the official repositories in the past in this sort of case where the fix wasn't available at the time of release so it's missing from just one release. I appreciate that this is all a non-trivial exercise for someone not familiar with the tooling though.
  - kragen 3y ago
    i don't really have that excuse just this evening i compiled qemacs, pcc, and jove from source, in the last case from the debian source package

by rlpb 3y ago

kragen 3y ago

i have 20.04 installed here (should i confess that publicly?) and the absence of xpdf has been a irritation literally every day for months a more rational person would have compiled xpdf from source obviously

rlpb 3y ago
You could probably grab the next version that was published to Debian (3.04-14), throw it into a PPA to build against 20.04 and it would probably work. People have also published this kind of thing as an update in the official repositories in the past in this sort of case where the fix wasn't available at the time of release so it's missing from just one release. I appreciate that this is all a non-trivial exercise for someone not familiar with the tooling though.
- kragen 3y ago
  i don't really have that excuse just this evening i compiled qemacs, pcc, and jove from source, in the last case from the debian source package