Bug#766803: Requesting chocolate-doom enter Debian main

[Simon Howard]

Package: chocolate-doom
Version: 2.1.0-1

Chocolate Doom is currently in the contrib section of Debian rather than
main, because it depends on an IWAD file in order to be usable. The
original Doom IWAD files, including the shareware version, are non-free.
Other source ports that are Boom compatible (eg. prboom-plus) use Freedoom
as an IWAD dependency in order to be useable and be in Debian main.
However, this has not been possible for Chocolate Doom because the levels
in Freedoom require a Boom compatible port and do not work with it.

As of the 0.9 release of Freedoom (now in Debian unstable), the FreeDM
spin-off project (package: freedm) is now fully Vanilla Doom compatible and
works perfectly with Chocolate Doom. Chocolate Doom even includes special
code that allows it to integrate with it more nicely (it can load the
DEHACKED lump from the IWAD). The Debian freedm package has been marked as
provides: doom-wad so there should no longer be any obstacle for Chocolate
Doom to be moved to Debian main.

The only possible objection I can think of is that the Debian
chocolate-doom package is structured in a monolithic fashion, also
containing chocolate-heretic, chocolate-hexen and chocolate-strife.
Arguably these binaries should still be in contrib as there aren't free
replacements for the IWADs for these games (Heretic has Blasphemer, but
it's incomplete and isn't in Debian). This would require restructuring the
package to split it into four separate packages, which is probably a good
idea anyway.

--
Simon Howard
https://soulsphere.org/
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