On Mon, 10 Mar 2014 17:10:17 GMT, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
Just to add a bit to the things already said, our current direction on how to integrate DUB with system libraries is roughly described in this github comment. The basic idea is to not try to turn DUB packages into DEB (or similar) packages, but rather just augment all bindings packages, such as the "openssl" one with system specific dependencies.
However, at some point I'd love to have all information necessary to build system packages available in the DUB package description, so that a "dub create-deb-package" command becomes possible. But this has so many implications if done properly for all platforms, that it is more a long-term idea than a concrete plan.
Hi Ludwig,
I already commented on the github comment, but would like to add some extra comments here as well. IMHO, that's the wrong approach, to directly create deb packages from DUB itself. Apart from the fact, that in order to be included in Debian itself, the package has to be provided in source form -and not a port-specific .deb package- which will then be sent to the autobuilders, which have a strict policy not to build packages that perform downloading extra content in the build phase -yes, technically the builders run in isolated mode with only access to an APT repository- so something like dub which gets stuff online, is out of the question anyway.
Plus, you also have to take extra care to follow the distro policy -which changes, not very often, but it does. Instead of trying to replicate what a number of dedicated tools are written specifically for, you could instead try to help them. The best method I could think of is by exporting not the package itself, but a makefile.
That way, a packager can just do a simple 'make' and just handle the packaging as usual. In any case, D binding packages are not really that different than other language bindings, in fact they're supposed to be simpler than, say, java packages in Debian. It can be really easy to integrate D packages in Debian and have them readily available to any distro user interested.