Bug#886590: Please add python3-z3 package

[Roman Lebedev]

On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 5:39 PM Fabian Wolff <fabi.wolff at arcor.de> wrote:
>
> On 9/24/19 2:49 PM, Roman Lebedev wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 3:32 PM Sylvestre Ledru <sylvestre at debian.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello
> >>
> >>
> >> Le 24/09/2019 à 12:51, Roman Lebedev a écrit :
> >>> Bump. Any chance this could be prioritized?
> >>> Lack of python3-z3 package prevents me from porting
> >>> some other python2 software to python3.
> >>
> >> Thanks to the work of Fabian Wolff, we have a better version of z3.
> > I'm a little bit out of context here, of *z3* or of z3 packaging?
> > Also, link?
>
> The z3 *package* was several years behind upstream z3, so I put in some work to package
> a more recent version of z3 for Debian, which is what Sylvestre was referring to.
>
> >> I don't know if he is planning to work on this soon but if you write a patch
> >> i would be happy to sponsor it.
>
> I can work on it; in fact, there has been a new upstream release of z3 (4.8.6, current
> Debian is 4.8.4), which I'd also like to package.
>
> *However*, there is one big problem: In order to build the libz3-cil package (.NET
> bindings), z3 (starting from version 4.8.5) requires the 'dotnet' command:
>
>   https://github.com/dotnet/cli/tree/master/src/dotnet
>
> This command isn't currently available in Debian, and I have no plans of packaging it,
> because I'm very inexperienced with Mono et al. (and packaging thereof).
>
>
> Rather, I'd like to take this as an opportunity to drop the libz3-cil (and maybe also
> libz3-ocaml-dev) package altogether. Those two packages cause _by far_ the highest
> maintenance effort, and I dare presume that they were the main reason why nobody has
> bothered to update the z3 package for so long.
>
> The question is: Wouldn't it be better to have more regular updates and better
> maintenance in general of the z3 package (I'd even consider co-maintaining it, given
> that Michael Tautschnig hasn't made an upload for this package in almost four years),
> at the cost of dropping those two little-used (according to Popcon) packages?
>
> Because I suppose that I'm not the only one not very knowledgeable about Mono and OCaml
> packaging, and this is a pretty large barrier to working on the z3 package (because
> nobody wants to break these two packages, so they decide not to touch z3 at all).
>
>
> But now, building the libz3-cil package is no longer possible unless somebody packages
> the dotnet command (in which case we could always reintroduce it), and as to the OCaml
> bindings, I have to admit that I'm not even sure whether they are currently functioning
> at all (I had to do some patching in the build system even just to get them to build).
>
>
> So, in conclusion: If I'm allowed to drop these two packages (but especially libz3-cil),
> I will have a look at packaging the newer upstream release, and, while doing so, I can
> also include a new python3-z3 package (and probably drop the Python 2 package, given
> that it's reaching its end-of-life soon).
>
> What are your thoughts on this?
I personally would not see dumping libz3-cil and libz3-ocaml-dev as a problem.

> Best regards,
> Fabian