VISTA, VIA, MIA

[Michael Hanke <michael.hanke@gmail.com>]

Hi list,

[tiny update to prevent people from wasting time]

I previously wrote:
> I am currently working on the packages of LIPSIA (listed at [0]) --
> currently mainly for our own lab purposes, but of course also with the
> aim to provide an official Debian package.
> 
> LIPSIA depending on the VISTA library raises the question if there has
> been any progress since [1]? AFAIK there is at least a 'via' package
> that might have superseeded the pieces that are needed by LIPSIA, but
> then there is also MIA (sorry, no URL).
> 
> Is anyone working on this issue -- or stopped working on it and could
> provide prospective packaging of some form or a status report?

Since there was no progress I decided to put some effort into it. I
have choosen VIA as the project to provide support for the vista format.
VISTA itself is dead. There is also MIA which seems to be maintained as
well, but since Lipsia (which is really my target) needs VIA anyway I
went for that.

ODIN can live with VISTA or VIA so that should not be an issue. If
anyone needs vistaio (from MIA) for a package, we should see whether that
can be coordinated somehow.

I prepared a package for VIA (full program: libvia0, libvia-dev,
via-bin, libvia-doc). If anyone needs that urgently please contact me.
Otherwise I'd prefer to keep it on my disk for two pending reasons.

  1. I performed a "copyright triage" to determine a possible legal
     issues. That resulted in a rather big debian/copyright and revealed
     a problem that makes the package unaccetable for Debian in its
     current shape. However, upstream know about the issue and agreed to
     resolve it -- expected timeframe: weeks.

  2. Significant pieces of the code stem from the early 90s and really
     deserve some attention. While forstering the code to build proper
     shared lib packages I made significant changes and also moved to a
     CMake-based build system. All those patches are currently inspected
     by upstream. They need careful checking to ensure proper functioning
     and the chance to increase the likelihood to get some stable
     library API in turn.

Overall, the pending work will take a few more months. I will announce
the corresponding packages whenever I have a working Lipsia package (and
hence also a proper VIA package) in all respects.

I won't submit an ITP now, since it makes no sense till the legal issues
are resolved.


Cheers,

Michael


-- 
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