[Debichem-devel] some improvements to the vmd packaging

["Steffen Möller"]

Hi Johannes,

> thanks for already packaging vmd. I only found that [1] already existed by luck
> and was close to doing it myself from scratch. Maybe vmd should be listed in
> the debichem wiki page?

We have the very analogue situation for Rosetta and ProFit (on Debian Med).

> But given that one is not allowed to redistribute vmd
> to people who did not register at the website, the is probably no point in
> giving it more publicity. Did anybody ever approach the vmd copyright holders
> about the problem with redistributing vmd?

Yes. Communication at some point stalled, though. Feel free to send my regards
and ask to revive that opening-process.

> I did some improvements/changes/extensions/fixes to the current packaging.
> Please find the debdiff attached. My changes are:
> 
>  - enable python, numpy, pthreads and cuda support
nice!!
>  - bump standards version
>  - bump compat level
>  - remove some useless whitespace changes in
>    adjust_install_path_in_configure.patch
>  - enabled hardening of binaries and shared libraries
>  - fix recursive variable problem in hesstrans plugin
>  - add thrust/device_ptr.h header to some cuda files
>  - disable setting rpath
>  - allow to set python paths externally (using pkg-config)
>  - change 1.9 to 1.9.1 in README.source
>  - add more cleaning to README.source
>  - don't ignore errors in debian/rules

Thank you for this!

> All changes are for amd64 systems. The... creative... build system used by
> upstream makes would've had required many more changes to support more
> architectures which I didnt want to add yet to keep the patch simple and less
> verbose.
> 
> Big troublemakers are still the image files in /usr/lib and wrongly set
> execution bits everywhere. But I think I will approach upstream with that
> first.
> 
> Any thoughts?

I do not have the spare capacity at the very moment and am very happy about
your work.

Best,

Steffen