Terminal::AnsiColor packaging

[Dominique Dumont]

On Wednesday, 7 March 2018 15:32:52 CET Alberto Luaces wrote:
> - In the end, the precompiled binaries are what is distributed in the
>   binary package.  I suspect they are architecture-independent, but I'm
>   not sure: are they?

Well, they are most of the time. Unfortunately, that's not enough. That's why nqp 
and rakudo packages are now arch dependant.

> - The sources of the module are not present in the final binary package.
>   Should I copy them to a given directory?  Will them be interesting to
>   have for debugging purposes?

The main problem with shipping precompiled binaries is that, all of them must 
be recompiled whenever rakudo is upgraded (or downgraded). This would require 
to setup automation on Debian build server to recompile all Perl6 modules every 
time rakudo is updated. [1] 

This requires to ship Perl6 source with the package otherwise, we'll have to re-upload 
all modules for each rakudo release. This won't scale well.

The messages [2] mentions another alternatives:
- run pre-compilation at package installation

And there's also another possibility:
- ship only sources and let rakudo compile module when needed

The latter option is the simplest for us, but it will somewhat fill up user's ~/.perl6 directory.

All in all, the latter option is still better than doing nothing. I guess we will be able
to improve the packaging when we better understand rakudo's compilation mechanism.

> - I'm also not sure about the name of the package, is it correct?

yes,

> - Somehow "pod2man" does not do a good job when trying to generate a man
>   page from the sources.

you mean perl5's pod2man ? if yes, Perl6 pod is different from Perl5 pod and 
can't be parsed correctly by perl5's pod2man.

> - I don't know how to make this module dependent on the exact version of
>   rakudo used to build it, nor when the compatibility is broken (is that
>   version→2 number?)

Unfortunately, the compatibility of pre-compiled file is broken any time rakudo is updated. 
There's a very strong coupling between the version of moar, nqp, rakudo and pre-compiled files.

Let's cross this bridge if we need to ship pre-compiled files.


> I have placed the repo at
> 
> https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-rakudo/modules/perl6-terminal-ansicolor.
> git/

I'll have a look.

Many thanks for your work :-)

All the best

Dominique

[1] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-rakudo-devel/2017-June/001146.html
[2] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-rakudo-devel/2017-May/001138.html
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