From: [email protected]

Package: gcal
Version: 3.01.1-5.1
Severity: minor
Tags: patch

When using gcal's -p option without $PAGER being set, it uses a set of hard-coded defaults: 'less', 'more', 'pg'. [1]

According to Debian Policy 11.4, this should be '/usr/bin/pager',
depending on interpretation also 'less' and 'more', but with lower
priority. Because of [1], this policy violation leads to 'more' being
used as pager with current gcal package and $PAGER unset. This might be undesirable for many users.

The pagers tried at runtime are specified in a NULL-terminated array
'pagers' being initialized from the macros PAGER1_PROG to PAGER3_PROG;
although existing in src/tailor.h, they seem to be really set by
config.h. A patch against configure.in is included which sets them to '"/usr/bin/pager"', '"more"' and 'NULL', avoiding the compile/configure
time check for the pagers' existence.

Rebuilding the package will break at least Thomas Esken's ASCII art logo
in gcal.info, though; it seems that some behaviour of makeinfo has
changed in this respect from makeinfo 4.0 to 4.7.

Regards,
Fabian

[1] These are dependant on which of them have been available on the
build system running the package's configure script. Current
gcal package seems to be built on a system with only 'more'
available of all the three pagers checked.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.26-1-k7
Locale: LANG=de_DE, LC_CTYPE=de_DE

Versions of packages gcal depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-13 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an ii libncurses5 5.4-4 Shared libraries for terminal hand

-- no debconf information

--- gcal-3.01.1.orig/configure.in 2000-06-14 02:03:00.000000000 +0200
+++ gcal-3.01.1/configure.in 2004-08-17 19:36:35.000000000 +0200
@@ -452,12 +452,9 @@
if test "$gcal_cv_use_pager" = yes; then
dnl
- dnl Checks for ``external'' pager programs (less, more, pg).
+ dnl Set ``external'' pager programs in compliance with Debian Policy 11.4.
dnl
- AC_CHECK_PROG(PAGER1, less, less)
- AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(PAGER1_PROG, "$PAGER1")
- AC_CHECK_PROG(PAGER2, more, more)
- AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(PAGER2_PROG, "$PAGER2")
- AC_CHECK_PROG(PAGER3, pg, pg)
- AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(PAGER3_PROG, "$PAGER3")
+ AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(PAGER1_PROG, "/usr/bin/pager")
+ AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(PAGER2_PROG, "less")
+ AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(PAGER3_PROG, "more")
fi
dnl

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)