[Pkg-julia-devel] Packaging policy for Julia related packages

[Bálint Réczey]

Hi Sébastien,

2014-07-25 13:44 GMT+02:00 Sébastien Villemot <sebastien at debian.org>:
> Le jeudi 24 juillet 2014 à 22:29 +0200, Bálint Réczey a écrit :
>> 2014-07-24 17:08 GMT+02:00 Sébastien Villemot <sebastien at debian.org>:
>> > Then, after the release of Jessie, we can think of packaging
>> > Julia-related packages. The first step would be to create a helper
>> > called julia-pkg-dev, similar to octave-pkg-dev (I have a skeleton for
>> > it). Then to package the most popular packages (PlPlot, Gadfly, …).
>> >
>> > Also note that upstream is not very enthusiast at the idea of having
>> > Debian distributing Julia packages, but I'm sure we will find a
>> > solution. I expect the Debian packages to be called julia-$foo (so yours
>> > would be called julia-factcheck (this is a convention similar to Octave
>> > packages). And files will be installed
>> > under /usr/share/julia/site/$VERSION, which is already in LOAD_PATH).
>> >
>> > So please don't rush with Factcheck.jl, and please wait a little until
>> > things settle. You are of course more than welcome to join the Debian
>> > Julia Team and help with the plan outlined above.
>> I would happily give a try to julia-pkg-dev while I have packaged
>> FactCheck manually already.
>> I think having a module separately would not be too early, it would at
>> least serve as a usable while not perfect example for packaging
>> modules even if the module is not the most popular one.
>> It may help bringing more Julia users to the packaging team.
>> Wouldn't you consider it useful?
>
> Given that the packaging infrastructure (julia-pkg-dev) is not ready,
> the FactCheck package will have to be modified at a later stage, when
> julia-pkg-dev is ready. So there is some duplicate work involved here.
> Especially I don't want people to take inspiration from that example,
> because it would mean even more work when julia-pkg-dev is ready.
>
> However, I don't want to discourage you from contributing to the team.
> So if you want to package FactCheck now, please name it julia-factcheck,
> and set the Debian Julia Team in the Maintainer field.
I have created a git repository under pkg-julia for packaging [1].
It would be great if you could check the packaging before I upload the
final package.
I also took the liberty of adjusting the Multimedia Team's
setup-repository script for us and placed it under pkg-julia.

>
> Concerning the location of the files, what I said in my previous email
> was wrong. They should go in /usr/share/julia/site/FactCheck/. Note that
> there is no Julia version number in that path. It is because I have
> patched Julia to remove that version number (see
> unversioned-system-load-path.patch). The reason is that such a version
> number is silly, because it would force us to recompile all Julia
> packages at every new Julia version. This is a waste of time and effort,
> especially for arch:all packages which need sourceful uploads. The
> drawback is that FactCheck will not be seen by non-Debian julia
> installations, but I consider this as relatively minor. Maybe we should
> discuss that with upstream.
Julia is a very young language and at this stage it may be useful to
place additional modules separately per Julia version like it is done
for Python and other languages. I expect FactCheck to work with every
coming Julia version, but this may not be the case for other modules.

>
> Also, I have accepted your request to join the Team. Welcome!
Thanks!

Cheers,
Balint

>
> --
>  .''`.    Sébastien Villemot
> : :' :    Debian Developer
> `. `'     http://www.dynare.org/sebastien
>   `-      GPG Key: 4096R/381A7594
>