Re: State of the darcs package
On 12.10.24 14:37, Ilias Tsitsimpis wrote:
> Hi Ben,
>
> On Sat, Oct 12, 2024 at 12:30PM, Ben Franksen wrote:
>> I see that the darcs package (https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/darcs)
>> seems to be stuck at an old version (2.16.5) for some time, which fails
>> to build due to missing dependencies. As one of the main developers I
>> would like to ask the package maintainers what we can do to help get
>> darcs into debian again, preferrably with a more current version. We
>> have released 2.18.3 some time ago but I am willing to put out another
>> release to resolve potential dependency problems.
>
> darcs in Debian currently lacks an active maintainer. The Debian Haskell
> group has stepped up to maintain this package, but since this group is
> currently responsible for more than 1000 Haskell packages, we don't have
> the time to resolve issues for individual packages. Everything that
> doesn't work out-of-the box usually stays behind.
>
> Unfortunately, this is the case for darcs. darcs is not part of Stackage
> (which we use in Debian in order to make sure that all the Haskell
> libraries play nice together) which means that most of the time doesn't
> work with the set of packages we have in Debian (that was the case with
> Stackage LTS 21 which we were using up until now, and you can see this
> here https://bugs.debian.org/1054953).
>
> In addition, the latest version of darcs now depends on strict-identity,
> which is not part of Debian (hence someone should package it), is not
> part of Stackage (which means it's less likely to be packaged in Debian)
> and also seems to be abandoned (no upload for almost 10 years, no
> replies to issues/patches).
>
> Lastly, I recently opened issue https://bugs.debian.org/1082790, to
> document all of the above issues and see if there is interest to keep
> darcs in Debian.
>
> If I had to suggest an action in order to keep darcs in Debian, I would
> say please add darcs in Stackage. It helps us make sure that it builds
> with the set of libraries we have in Debian. It also helps to prevent
> using deprecated/abandoned software as it's the case with
> strict-identity now).
>
> Hope the above helps,
I see. Thanks for the detailed explanations. I will try to find out what
is needed to get darcs back into stackage; shouldn't be that hard. Will
report back here when we achived that.
Cheers
Ben
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