PPA for Sigil 0.9.* ?

[Arran]

Hello

I wonder, where I would turn to ask for a ppa for Kubuntu trusty (14.04) for the Sigil Version 0.9.*. This longtime version, until 2019, is probably still the most used at present as all releases since then are, honestly spoken, crap. Full of errors, features dropped, etc, in short something for whoever, but just not for people who are doing real work on the computer.
Most PPA-makers realise this problem and keep adding this version in their PPA's.
So, I would like to write to a responsable person, be that in this forum or somewhere else.

Unfortunately I have no clue how to compile this myself. All my earlier attempts have failed miserably, I just don't grasp how to do it.

Thanks a lot.

[KevinH]

If anyone plans to help with this, please remember the double entity bug in libxml2 in all really new versions that will need to be worked around.

KevinH

[Arran]

Do you think this will become a problem?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Arran

as all releases since then are, honestly spoken, crap. Full of errors, features dropped, etc, in short something for whoever, but just not for people who are doing real work on the computer.

A bit unfair (and untrue, in my opinion, since I certainly consider my work on Sigil "real"), but whatever. The main hurdle for a Trusty/14.04 ppa is Sigil's Qt 5.4.x minimum requirement. Currently at Qt5.2.x, I'm just not confident Trusty will ever make it to Qt5.4.2 before 2019.

So any Sigil 0.9.x Trusty compatible ppa will also likely depend on a volunteer Qt 5 ppa (Trusty compatible) that meets the 5.4.2 requirements of Sigil. I hope you get your wish, but I don't consider it very likely. I'm afraid it would exist already if it were.

As the one who wrote the BuildingOnLinux document, it saddens me that it wasn't straight-forward enough for you to follow. Perhaps you can share where it was unclear, or not detailed enough? There are also several people here who have experience building Sigil on Ubuntu (and Linux in general). Feel free to create a thread with specific questions should you like to try building Sigil for yourself again in the future.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by Arran

Do you think this will become a problem?

The double-entity bug in libxml2? Yes, it already is an issue. The Linux distributions are using the latest versions of this library which has a serious bug when used with Qt (the gui library that Sigil uses). There has been a bug report with patch since early January from Apple but it has been ignored by the libxml2 developers. I have updated the bug to include Sigil and tried to send direct e-mail to the lead developer but it was either never received or ignored.

Apple uses its own version of this library and they have fixed the bug. Windows typically uses an older version that does not have the bug. Only Linux distributions are being hit with the bug as they have updated to the most current version (with the bug) since this is a key library.

I just wanted to draw this to the attention of anyone creating a Sigil ppa for linux.

KevinH

[Arran]

Well, thanks for the help and information. I don't think that I will go into compilation, then I'd rather stay with the present available version for Trusty.
And sorry, with crap I ment KDE and Plasma5, not you and other Sigil users.

For me, this topic can be regarded as closed.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Arran

And sorry, with crap I ment KDE and Plasma5, not you and other Sigil users.

Ahh ... understood. I switched to the Cinnamon Desktop Enviironment a long time ago. So I had no real issues leaving 14.04 behind.

[st_albert]

Originally Posted by KevinH

If anyone plans to help with this, please remember the double entity bug in libxml2 in all really new versions that will need to be worked around.

KevinH

Hate to ask a question that I should be able to answer with Google, if I knew exactly what I was looking for, but could you point me to a version of libxml2 that doesn't have this bug? I'm using Kubuntu 16.04, Sigil 0.9.6

I understand the workaround would be to place this library in /usr/local/share/sigil

Thanks,

Albert

[KevinH]

Our official issue about this is here:

https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil/issues/232

libxml2 versions >= 2.9.3 have the bug. libxml2-2.9.2 works. If you build your own, there is a patch near the end of that issue (not the first patch) that will apply over the latest libxml2-2.9.4 and even work with libxml2 master. That way you can have all of the recent bug fixes of the newer versions as well.

KevinH

[DiapDealer]

If you have the problem, and have a known good version of libxml2, then it needs to be put in the same directory as the Sigil binary. Which would be <install_prefix>/lib/sigil/

[PeterT]

I'm not a heavy Linux user but I can't help but think that the idea of LTS versions is not to let you run the newest and greatest version of apps, but instead to run the apps that were current when the LTS version was created.

[eschwartz]

^^ That it is, and this is a non-issue.

If you want recent software versions, don't use Ubuntu. Or at least use the development version of Ubuntu.
But really, I recommend using Arch or Gentoo. Both give you the flexibility to use recent software while sticking with old versions of whatever (assuming it still builds against newer libraries). So you could stick with KDE4.

In fact, it is available in the Arch Linux AUR, and as one of the fully supported versions of KDE on Gentoo.

[KevinH]

FWIW, this is a real issue on Linux that no one seems to address. Breaking backwards binary compatibility (or even pseudo breakage by decree) just makes no sense. I can build binaries that work backwards to Mac OSX 10.9 easily or with some added work all the way back to Mac OSX 10.6, on the very latest version of Mac OSX 10.11 with no issues. On Windows, with some help, all the way back to Win Xp.

Why on earth should the same thing not be possible on Linux. Why should Linux users have to either upgrade their OS every year or two just to get access to new versions of programs or jump to rolling distributions that push the envelope and are not always stable?

This is what the the application package format debate/wars is about on Linux right now.

I would think using private distribution specific ppas is in fact a good way to deal with this issue until the application package format wars on Linux end (if they ever do!).

KevinH

[eschwartz]

The breakage is generally because of versioned sonames that no longer exist.

You can build backwards-compatible Windows/OSX binaries by shipping everything you need in the isolated package you distribute.
You can do the same thing with Linux as well, but most people prefer one copy of everything, so it all gets built to work together.

calibre has the portable binaries installed to /opt and Sigil was thinking of doing the same...

PPAs exist to make built-to-work-together newer versions of XXXXX. But they don't work very well when core frameworks used by the system (e.g. Qt5) aren't getting updated and your project requires newer versions of that core framework.

So really, it is Sigil that isn't backwards-compatible with Qt5 5.2.x

[st_albert]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

If you have the problem, and have a known good version of libxml2, then it needs to be put in the same directory as the Sigil binary. Which would be <install_prefix>/lib/sigil/

Thanks! This worked for me. In case others are interested, here's what I did:

Spoiler:

1) downloaded source code for libxml2-2.9.2.tar.gz from ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxml2/ and extracted it into a working directory. (say, ~/workdir/)

2) cd to that directory and issue commands ./configure and make.

3) since I didn't want to install it system-wide, I didn't do "make install" but simply copied (as root) ~/workdir/.libs/libxml2.so.2.9.2 to /usr/local/libs/sigil/ (which is where the sigil binary is located)

4) cd /usr/local/libs/sigil and (as root) ln -s libxml2.so.2.9.2 libxml2.so.2

and that did it. My system is Kubuntu 16.04.1 64-bit Xenial Xerus

Albert