[squeak-dev] Debian package project - calling PhilB

Phil B pbpublist at gmail.com
Sun Aug 21 14:17:02 UTC 2022


Tim,

My apologies for going silent for so long as life seems to keep throwing
urgent tasks in my path these days.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to
find the time to work on much of anything Smalltalk related recently.  At
this point I'd completely understand if you need to go a different way
rather than continuing to wait on me.  Here's a recap of where things
stand...

Work completed:
1) I have (or had... it worked as of late last year) working multi-arch
packaging for i386/amd64/armhf/arm64.  On x86, side-by-side installs of
i386 and amd64 packages were confirmed working. (I don't recall if
side-by-side ARM 32- and 64-bit versions were working yet or not)
2) Thanks to Dave's changes to the classic VM repo, all VM packages can
co-exist.  This should provide roughly the functionality of the all-in-one
packaging in terms of being able to run the majority of images in use out
there.
3) Given 1 & 2, the packages can be built and either manually installed or
installed via a custom (Debian package) repo.

Work remaining to be done:
1a) I was beginning work with Tobias and Marcel to make the (relatively
minor, IIRC) changes needed to integrate the packaging work into the VM
(github) repo.
1b) There was also a desire to include CI builds in the scope.  I don't
recall how much there is to do for this.
2) There are several (IIRC, 3) embedded libraries that need to be
eliminated (i.e. switch to using the Debian package repo versions of the
libraries) to comply with Debian packaging policies.  This does not appear
to be entirely straightforward as the Squeak library versions are rather
ancient and there's at least one custom patch to work around an issue with
a library. (based on my preliminary research on the JPEG library, this is
probably the largest bit of work remaining)
3) Once 2 is done, work with the Debian maintainer to get the packages
included in the Debian package repos.  This will likely require some
additional minor tweaks to make the maintainers happy.  This process will
require some diplomacy as the package maintainers don't have a deep
understanding of why Squeak does things the way it does and wanted some
things that aren't possible... but initial feedback was encouraging that
getting them on board is feasible.

Given my availability currently, I could probably commit to helping finish
item 1a in the near future (i.e. this year) if we just wanted to integrate
what I have into the github repos.  It's items 1b, 2 and 3 that are
difficult for me to commit to a timeframe on right now.

Please let me know your thoughts...

Thanks,
Phil

On Wed, Aug 17, 2022 at 3:30 PM tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:

> HI PhilB; are you still around on the list? Wondering if any progress on
> making the Debian package thing has been made?
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Useful random insult:- A mental midget with the IQ of a fencepost.
>
>
>
>
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