Fixing SC in testing

[Dan S]

2012/8/5 Felipe Sateler <fsateler at debian.org>:
> We currently have a broken supercollider in testing, and the freeze
> means 3.5.3 will not migrate automatically.
>
> Dan, since you are the most knowledgeable on SC matters, could you
> prepare a message on why do we prefer 3.5.x instead of 3.4.x for
> wheezy? I can think of:
>
> 1. Widgets (are the new qt-widgets source-compatible with the older
> java-based ones?)
> 2. No more scons.
>
> Any other important stuff?

Important issues with SuperCollider 3.4.x in debian wheezy, that
motivate transitioning directly to 3.5.x:

* SC 3.4.x relied optionally on a third-party java-based kit
("SwingOSC") to provide for building user interface widgets. (This
provides standard server- and addon-management interfaces as well as
user-made GUIs. It's not compulsory to have GUIs but it's typically
assumed in tutorials and the official book.) This was never packaged
for debian, so the provision is kinda incomplete. SC 3.5 includes a
QT-based widget system which provides all of this functionality and
with the same programming interface. It's very nice.

* The GEdit plugin "sced" has been updated to support GEdit version 3,
which is what is in wheezy. (We previously just deactivated the gedit
plugin in wheezy which is a shame as it's a recommended editor for
beginners.)

* The old and overgrown SCons build system has been removed in favour
of Cmake. Requires much less downstream packaging effort.

* User config files are moved to a much more XDG-friendly location:
instead of ~/share/supercollider   it's now
~/.local/share/SuperCollider and ~/.config/SuperCollider.   (Old
config is detected and migration info is output.)

There are many other changes - it's a major release of SC - news for
3.5 is at http://doc.sccode.org/Guides/News-3_5.html

This OK?
Dan