Volunteer to upgrade GhostScript

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 12:48 PM, René J.V. wrote:
> On Thursday May 14 2015 11:31:08 Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>
> BTW, I've always "gone through the front door" in my own code, using (through pipes) the ghostscript executable rather than linking to its library.

This "problem" is [also] affecting those who use pipes.

>> I'm not aware of any MS-related functionality, but I'm not exactly
>> sure what you wanted to say. (Given that nobody even bothered to
>
> I was wondering aloud what functionality this eps2write component could have, with the underlying question how many ports rely on it.

I have no clue.

Functionality: I suspect it's used to create/write EPS files out of
EPS/PS/PDF sources, possibly eliminating complex routines into "plain
drawing routines" or so.

Ports: I'm sure that asymptote uses it (but it switched to eps2write
two days ago, so all is fine now) and judging from some quick googling
at least octave must have been bitten by the same problem. But I'm
sure there must be some other packages as well.

> But that's all moot if there are other ABI incompatibilities elsewhere in the newer ghostscript versions.
>
>> update gs for a very long time, I'm not sure that we have the
>> man-hours available to code in the backward compatibility when the
>> upstream already dropped it.)
>
> If it's already dropped after only a short period of existence, can you not simply remove it from the (default) build?

How can we remove something that has already been removed?

Mojca