[Pkg-pascal-devel] Castle Model Viewer (formerly view3dscene) 5.0.0 release

[Michalis Kamburelis]

Hi,

We have just announced a big new release of Castle Model Viewer, which
is a new name for view3dscene! We have a big announcement describing
the new features and changes in this release:

    https://castle-engine.io/wp/2024/05/24/castle-model-viewer-formerly-view3dscene-5-0-0-release-ton-of-improvements-coming-from-latest-castle-game-engine-support-to-validate-models-md3-animations-saving-to-stl-more-x3d-4-0-features/

The announcement already contains a lot of juicy details for users :)
So below I'll just focus on organizational / Debian's packaging
perspective that I think is important for you to know.

1. I realize that rename view3dscene->Castle Model Viewer will mean
extra work on your side, to transition to the new package name. Our
repo/binary name is "castle-model-viewer", so I suggest you name
Debian package the same.

2. Note that the release contains also a few models in
"examples_models" subdirectory.

    We talked about it in the past threads -- to avoid relying at
build-time on sample VRML files in White Dune package. If you run
auto-tests of "castle-model-viewer" during Debian package build, you
can now use the stuff in "examples_models".

    When packaging, you could deploy these to
/usr/share/doc/castle-model-viewer/examples_models/ .

3. The 5.0.0 release depends on new Castle Game Engine, 7.0-alpha.3,
which is *not* released yet.

    I know it's a bit unusual order (the "normal" order would be to
first release Castle Game Engine, and then Castle Model Viewer
dependin on new CGE release). Please bear with us, we have some bits
in Castle Game Engine to be still finalized before 7.0-alpha.3, though
they should not affect anything (API or features) in Castle Model
Viewer. (And if they will, we will release Castle Model Viewer 5.0.1
and recommend Debian to just skip 5.0.0 in favor of 5.0.1.)

    So, practically, you will want to wait for Castle Game Engine
7.0-alpha.3 release, and then package it in Debian, and only then
package Castle Model Viewer 5.0.0 (or 5.0.1, if it will be necessary).

    I hope to have Castle Game Engine 7.0-alpha.3 available in a week.

4. As upstream, we package castle-model-viewer along with another
tool, castle-model-converter .
https://castle-engine.io/castle-model-converter is a command-line
application to convert/validate models. The downloads on
https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-model-viewer/releases/tag/v5.0.0
contain both tools in one archive.

    For Debian, I think it may actually make more sense (be more
natural) to split them into 2 packages, castle-model-viewer and
castle-model-converter. The latter is a command-line application, thus
it doesn't depend on any X/GTK libraries.

    On my side, I plan to work on Snap packages for both
castle-model-viewer and castle-model-converter soon. And I also plan
to make this split, i.e. there will be 2 packages, castle-model-viewer
and castle-model-converter.

    Both tools are maintained now in one repository,
https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-model-viewer . Mostly because
the castle-model-converter is actually a very tiny application in code
(literally one source file with < 300 lines,
https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-model-viewer/blob/master/castle_model_converter.dpr
), it didn't make sense to create separate repo for it. But from users
POV, I think castle-model-viewer and castle-model-converter are best
presented as separate packages.

5. As for the compiler, we recommend to use FPC 3.2.2, which shall not
be a problem for you since even Debian stable already has it (
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=fpc&searchon=names&suite=stable&section=all
).

    Though if anyone needs it, both castle-model-viewer and underlying
Castle Game Engine also still support older FPC 3.2.0 (see
https://castle-engine.io/supported_compilers.php for details).

I'm of course open to help with any task related to packaging, go
ahead and ask me anything. I'm not a Debian developer, but I'm a
Debian user (using testing or stable Debian versions, depending on the
machine). So I'll want to assist you however I can to make Castle
Model Viewer shine in Debian :)

Regards,
Michalis