Re: Debian package on Windows

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

On Mon, 2016-02-22 at 14:05:33 +0000, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> [ for -devel: this is a reply to a post to debian-apache, please see
>   https://lists.debian.org/debian-apache/2016/02/msg00004.html ]

Inlining parts of that mail here:

> On Sat, 20 Feb 2016 01:09:18 +0000, Eric Mittelette wrote:
> > I contact you today about a crazy idea, but I hope it is a right kind of
> > crazy!

I have no problem with crazy, this one seems to me more shocking than
anything else. :)

> > I'm PM in the Visual C++ Team (VC Lib to be precise here at Microsoft),
> > we started to think about lib acquisition (still a painful process for
> > C++ on Windows) and we are imaging different options, one is to port
> > apt-get on Windows.

I'd assume that porting apt itself should be not too difficult. As
Jonathan has pointed out, you might want to get in contact with the
apt team though.

  <https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Apt>

> > Porting Apt-Get mean using Debian format (we love it) and providing
> > Windows binary inside the package...

If by that you mean you'd also want to use dpkg, then that might be a
bit more difficult, as dpkg relies heavily on the underlying system to
provide POSIX semantics. Such as being able to remove opened files, or
replacing opened files with other opened files. Extensive use of fork(2).
And other similar things.

I'd be quite uncomfortable working around several of those things to
make dpkg work on such a best though. Because some of those are IMO
the basis for a sane package manager.

  <https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg>

> > For doing that we imagine a light way process to adapt your actual build
> > script to generate Windows binaries using our latest Clang/c2 compiler
> > integration (meaning in theory just changing an env variable to switch
> > from gcc or Clang to our Clang/C2 compiler will be enough...)

Over the years there's been attempts to create various Windows ports
based on different runtimes:

  Debian GNU/Interix
  <https://sourceforge.net/projects/debian-kcygwin/>
  <https://wiki.debian.org/Mingw-W64>

Hmm it seems we even have a mailing list, which seems pretty dead to me,
but might give background information on previous attempts:

  <https://lists.debian.org/debian-win32/>

I think people in general have concluded that such a port would be mostly
useful only to cross-build, but not to run stuff.

There are other teams that have worked to use clang instead of gcc in
Debian proper:

  <https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/clang-secondary-compiler>

> > The main idea here is to not reinvent the wheel for packaging management
> > and use something existing, powerful and well known by the community.
> >
> > Of course all the project will be open source (the new Microsoft J)

That sounds great. And it would be an interesting curiosity to end up
adding this "thing" to <https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/Downstream>. :)

> > Do you want to be included in future discussions and provide feedback as
> > we get more details fleshed out?

I'm not sure if there's interest in a Windows port of Debian, but
porting specific projects might be of interest to the particular
teams, so you'd want to contact those individually perhaps.

Also if you'd like for any changes you end up doing to be included in
the original projects, I'd recommend including those upstream teams in
your discussions, so that they can tell you what is and what is not
acceptable, or a direction they'll agree to take or not.

Thanks,
Guillem