[Pkg-julia-devel] 0.5 version and debianizing .jl packages

[Peter Colberg]

Hi Fabricio,

On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 05:34:07AM -0300, Fabricio Cannini wrote:
> I have some questions related to the upcoming version 0.5 release:
> 
> - Do you (members of pkg-julia-devel) think it is already about time to
> start debianizing more .jl packages (the ones you get through
> `Pkg.add("foo")`) ?

I am holding efforts to package Julia packages for Debian until the
language matures and the backwards-incompatible changes become fewer,
at which point we should also start seeing applications using Julia.

This is not at all meant to deter you from beginning to package Julia
packages right now. Maybe you already have a compelling use case?

> - I see that some functions were removed from the core julia runtime to its
> own .jl package [https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/v0.5.0/NEWS.md#deprecated-or-removed]
> Do you intend to package it ? (Not sure if dependent of the first question)

I noticed that the Rmath package became a dependency of a statistical
package recently, but it was compiled and installed without further
ado; so we probably need not do anything.

> - I also noticed that there is no (or could not find) packaging guidelines.
> Is there any already?

At the moment there exist no packaging guidelines.

> - And more importantly, do you need/welcome a (sorta rusty) hand to help
> work on what I've pointed out?

If you would like to start work on this, you are invited to join the
team by creating an alioth account and requesting to join pkg-julia [1].

Do you have any details in mind? I suppose there would be three parts
to the effort: a program that converts the upstream package metadata
to a Debian package template; a debhelper program that runs the test
suite; and packaging guidelines as you mentioned above.

Regards,
Peter

[1] https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-julia/