WordPress 4.1 for Debian

Release 4.1 of WordPress came out on Friday so after some work to fit in with the Debian standards, the Debian package 4.1-1 of WordPress will be uploaded shortly.  WordPress have also updated their themes with a 14-day early theme called twentyfifteen.  This is the default theme for WordPress 4.1 on-wards.

I have also made some adjustments with the embedded code that WordPress ships. This is the usually JavaScript or PHP code that WordPress has in their release tarballs that comes from other projects. There is a fine line between keeping the WordPress install the same and having to deal with the maintenance of the embedded code. An example of a good one not to use embedded code is php-getid which the Debian maintainer has put in some additional patches for a better security fix while the alternative is jquery which is a little sad in the Debian-word being so many versions behind. php-snoopy got reverted to embedded code because its not exactly the same as upstream.

A significant (or invisible, depends on your browser) is the mediaelement components now don’t use the un-maintainable silverlight and flash plugins, which is the same how the libjs-mediaelement package works. In fact the code IS from that package.

dh_linktree

As I was looking into the embedded js/php code in WordPress, I also had to look into how the previous maintainer kept all the versions in order without some horrible mess of patchfiles and symlinks. The answer was dh_linktree. This program plugs into the standard debhelper rules file and can basically use symlinks in the package to use the standard Debian versions of files. It a bit cleverer than symlinks in that you can say use the link always or only if the files are the same.

If you need to remove some of your embedded code out of Debian packages, have a look into it. It might save you a lot of agnst or hand-crafted rules files.