Modula-3 packages (Re: Experimental Anon-CVS Access)
For those on debian-devel: this started with a discussion about various
CVS access methods for those on the Gnome mailing list. It then got
slightly sidetracked to discuss Modula 3 (CVSup is written in M3.)
Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com> wrote:
>"Thomas G. Lockhart" <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu> writes:
>
>> We started using CVSup for the PostgreSQL project back in September. We
>> got great support from the developer, John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com>,
>> and it has been working well^H^H^H^H very well for us since.
>
>Is that the size of Modula 3 the only big problem?
Yes. The other problem -- much smaller -- is that the CVSup makefiles
are very FreeBSD-specific. That's easily got around, though.. they
only invoke m3build for each directory. (AFAICT)
>> The biggest downside is the cost of the first
>> installation: ~200MB to install Modula3! (This is my recollection,
>> and there may be ways to shrink that substantially.)
>
>That's what's holding me back on Linux - there isn't a Debian package of
>Modula 3, and it looks like a big job to make one up.
It is. Believe me. I've got a preliminary package virtually finished of
Modula 3 -- it's working quite nicely, actually. On and off, it took me
about five or six months to do it (mind you, that was in the middle of
the university year, so it probably would have taken about one month
otherwise.) The only thing that's really holding me back from releasing
it is the problem of producing both libc5- and libc6-based shared
libraries. (Oh, and as yet, I haven't compiled it against libc6.)
If the general consensus is that this isn't a problem, I'll be more
than happy to downgrade (currently running a sort-of-upgraded-to-hamm
system :), and produce the packages.
As for shrinking the ~200MB for Modula 3 -- that's easily done. I
could provide (libc5-based, unfortunately) shared libraries for M3
programs -- libm3, etc. -- which require around 3 or 4MB; or CVSup can
be linked statically (which dramatically reduces that overhead.)
Once I've got M3 working to my satisfaction, it'll go into experimental
(I _definitely_ want feedback from M3 users with regards to how I've
split up the packages). When it's in the main distribution, I'll also
be packaging up CVSup, which should be fairly easy. (especially in
comparison to M3 :-)
Problems:
* University closes on Wednesday (24th December), re-opening on
January 5th.
* I look like starting full-time work on January 12th (assuming all
goes well with various interviews, etc.. I've made it past the
first interview for a job I'm rather interested in.)
* I _don't_ have any Internet connection other than Monash.
* My Monash accounts will be (mostly) deleted around the end of
February.
* I don't know if/when I'll be able to get Internet access from home.
(my father's being a _real_ stick-in-the-mud in this respect -- and
besides, I can't afford a second phone line right now, which, as
far as my father's concerned, is a pre-requisite. Ah, the joys of
living at home with the parents.. :-/ )
The first issue isn't a major hassle. Neither is the second, as I'll
still be able to hop onto university machines for a while. The third
and fourth issues _are_ the hassles at the moment -- I don't know if
I'll be able to keep everything up-to-date.
As things stand, I'm hoping that a colleague will keep open my
accounts on certain systems in the library. If that's the case, it'll
be a simple matter to use those systems to keep in touch until I get
full connectivity through an ISP of some sort. Otherwise...
I'll put copies of the debian/ directory (from the bootstrap compiler
and the Modula-3 sources) on my webpage, and email debian-devel when
it's accessible.
Somebody else wrote, in a subsequent email message:
> I think someone with programming experience and Debian package
> building experience could put together a M3 package with no more
> trouble than doing something like libc6... non-trivial, but not
> undoable. If it's not done in two years, I'll take a shot at it.
As I've already said, it's practically done. I'm happy to make my
work available to those who are interested.
Be warned: a lot of the work is done in a number of shell scripts
that make extensive use of sed. They probably should be rewritten
in Perl; I've started doing so, but since I'm also learning Perl
as I go, it'll take some time. :-)
Build time: I have a 486 DX4-100, with 48MB of RAM, and a fair chunk
(2.1G, I think) of (IDE) hard drive. It takes around 3 to 4 hours from
start to finish. (This includes all the shuffling around of files into
the Debian package heirarchy, the generation of diff files, etc.)
Cheers.. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, etc. to all involved in
the Debian and Gnome projects.
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