Re: Tux Commander & Borland Kylix

[elijah wright <elw@stderr.org>]

> Subject: Tux Commander & Borland Kylix
>
> I want to package tuxcmd (Tux Commander - great GTK2-based
> TotalCommander-alike file manager). It's free (code under GPL), but it
> requires Borland Kylix 3 Open Edition to build it, that is not in Debian
> and it won't ever be there I think. Also, author provides a compiled
> binaries of his software. Is it possible ever to see the software in
> Debian? If so, then in what section?

is there any chance that the software could be ported to compile with one
of the free pascal compilers?  several of those seem quite featureful on
debian.

something that requires kylix to build is obviously never going to be in
main - those things need to be buildable with free tools, AFAIK.

nonfree isn't quite right, either, i think - the code you're building is
GPL-ish, but won't build without nonfree tools.  contrib sounds like a
useful slotting for it.

it would be useful - to help alleviate problems of this sort - if someone
produced a contrib package that could unpack a copy of the kylix open
edition under dpkg control :)  that would certainly make it easier for
other people to work on it, at the very least.

a lot of the problems you will face with this are problems that java folks
(prior to the recent availability of high-quality free JVMs) have faced in
debian.  the way to get something into main is to have it be buildable
with free tools, obviously.  :)


elijah