Re: Kerkerkruip

(Replying out of order)

On 13 October 2014 10:06, Nils Dagsson Moskopp <nils@dieweltistgarnichtso.net> wrote:

From <https://github.com/i7/kerkerkruip/blob/master/tools/travis_build>
it seems there exist build dependencies, meaning Kerkerkruip depends on:
• ni — a compiler that translates Inform 7 into Inform 6 code
• inform6 — a compiler for Inform 6 code that produces a story file
• cBlorb — a story file compiler that produces a gblorb archive

The Inform 7 developers have released a package for Debian Wheezy. I
think this would be a native package? <http://inform7.com/download/>

Dannii, Victor, as developers of Kerkerkruip, do you think the Inform 7
developers have released enough code so that it is possible to package
it for Debian? If so, do you think this would be easy or hard to do it?

Inform 7 is unfortunately still closed source. (Hopefully it will be opened in the future. The developer has promised this.) If Kerkerkruip was accepted into Debian, it would have to go into contrib, according to the policy manual 2.2.2. If I understand the policies correctly it would be allowable for a contrib package's Makefile to download and install Inform 7.

These do not seem to be packaged in Debian testing:
> $ for binary in ni inform6 cBlorb; do command-not-found $binary; done
> ni: command not found
> inform6: command not found
> cBlorb: command not found

Inform 6 is in Debian already, under package name "inform". It is currently marked as non-free, probably because it includes a bunch of libraries with unclear licences. It should really be broken into three packages: the compiler, the standard library, and additional libraries. The compiler and the standard library are both available under a DFSG-compatible Licence. The Debian package is also quite old. If you still want something to work on Nils, maybe that would be a better option!

cBlorb is not currently in Debian, but it is open source.