Sync libevent 2.0.10 from Debian experimental

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This bug is tagged needs-packaging which identifies it as a request for a new package in Ubuntu. As a part of the managing needs-packaging bug reports specification, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/Specs/NeedsPackagingBugs, all needs-packaging bug reports have Wishlist importance. Subsequently, I'm setting this bug's status to Wishlist.

According to kklimonda, syncing might not be such a good idea. Here's what he wrote on #transmission@freenode:

<kklimonda> anoteng: it's not easily syncable
<kklimonda> anoteng: it can't be installed side-by-side with libevent 1.4.x and not all reverse dependencies build with 2.0.10
<jordan> kklimonda: could you describe how they don't sit side-by-side?
<jordan> you mentioned headers iirc
<kklimonda> jordan: yes - both libevent 1.4.x and 2.0.10 provide /usr/include/event.h
<kklimonda> jordan: which means that they can't be installed at the same time.
<kklimonda> jordan: because of that debian maintainer has decided not to prepare libevent2 package, but simply upgraded libevent to 2.0.10

This just looks like a normal library update. The Debian maintainer did bump the soname and also renamed the packages properly (see http://packages.debian.org/source/experimental/libevent). So in that sense it's not a separate source and separate -dev package, so while you can install the actual libraries side-by-side, the 1.4 library would be NBS after the sync, and we would be forced to rebuild everything against 2.0.

So the main question is whether the reverse dependencies can be built against and work with 2.0?

-- natty/main build deps on libevent-dev:
memcached
nfs-utils
php5
transmission

-- natty/universe build deps on libevent-dev:
beanstalkd
bitlbee
dnsproxy
farpd
forked-daapd
gearmand
getstream
honeyd
infon
ladvd
libdnsres
lua-event
memcachedb
museek+
mysql-proxy
pgbouncer
picviz
prelude-manager
python-event
python-gevent
scanssh
swordfish
tmux
tor
trickle
unworkable

php5 (php-fpm) work fine with libevent 2.0. (php5 - compiled from source)

I have tried rebuilding all the packages in both main and universe against the libevent 2.0.10 in the https://launchpad.net/~kklimonda/+archive/libevent2 PPA.
All but four did fine, but the failure of one in its unit tests make me think that at least part of the packages that did build may not work correctly. As for the packages that did fail:

* honeyd -- inactive upstream (ironically he's the author of libevent). I have attempted porting it to libevent2, and I've done it but I can't really test it as I have no idea how to use it so I can't tell if the port was successful. I didn't have luck contacting upstream author (but will try again)
* ladvd -- this is the one with failing tests (or rather a single test). We can attempt fixing it, as it shouldn't be hard.
* python-event -- this one has inactive upstream, no packages depend on it, we already have a python-gevent which is more popular and working
* lua-event -- this one is tricky. lua-event that we ship is a fork of lua-event that has been made with single package in mind (prosody). Apparently all changes from this fork has been already merged upstream, and the upstream lua-event builds fine with libevent2, but Debian maintainer is concerned with whether prosody works with it, so he asked for some time to do tests. I also did not hear from him since then.

There is not much time before the feature freeze but, if I could get one more person who knows C interested in helping me with ladvd, and proofreading honeyd changes I've made, and if I got answer about lua-event, we could make this transition.

My main concern is the fact that we'd have to check as many reverse dependencies for whether they actually work - and even that may not be enough, someone would have to subscribe to all those packages and investigate problems (probably with the help of upstream) for the possibility that their cause is the new libevent.

Unsubscribing ubuntu-sponsors, please resubscribe when this sync is actionable

[Expired for libevent (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]