Re: Getting mod_caml and perl4caml into Debian
On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 07:22:35PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
>
> Hi Sven,
>
> [I'm writing this to you in particular because you seem to be responsible
> for a lot of the OCaml packages in Debian.]
Well, i maintain the ocaml package, and as thus are sort of the leader
of our small ocaml debian team. We are not all that many people, so it
is not really possible to package everything, but i was thinking i
should have a look at mod_ocaml this afternoon, without really having
the time for it.
> What are the steps for getting two of my packages into Debian? This
> would really help me because we want to install these on the machines
> at Merjis, and compiling from source is a pain (they're all Debian
> machines already).
>
> The two packages are mod_caml (Apache bindings) and perl4caml (Perl
> bindings).
Well, i think that maybe you don't really want to become a debian
developer, which is something which needs a huge time commitment, but it
is also possible to maintain packages and have a full debian developer
sponsor the packages. If you are willing to do that, you could subscribe
yourself to the debian/ocaml alioth project :
http://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-ocaml-maint/
Altough it is mainly the subversion repository there which contains our
commonly maintained packages. And there is also naturally the
debian-ocaml-maint@lists.debian.org mailing list where the ocaml
maintainers meet. You can look at the archives of it too if you want.
> I'm willing to do any work required to make this happen, although I'm
> not a particularly experienced Debian packager. My previous efforts at
> writing debian/rules and so on have been, hmmm, a bit shoddy. But I
> can learn!
That is not all so difficult, if the upstream package is well behaved, a
simple run of dh_make will usually provide the bases for a working
package. We prefer to use dpatch though, which enables to have all the
modifications to the upstream tarball in the debian directory, and thus
make the integreation in the subversion directory easier. There is
naturally the ocaml_packaging_policy document which you need to read, it
contain lot of information pertaining to packaging of ocaml related
things, but i guess that you would also need to look a bit at the apache
and perl related documents, but i am not really familiar with them.
Anyway, if you go this way, don't hesitate to ask questions on the
debian-ocaml-maint (also called d-o-m) list, we will be glad to help in
case of doubt.
> I've submitted two RFPs today to WNPP. They haven't been processed by
> the bugs server yet, but they should hopefully appear shortly.
a mail to the debian-ocaml-maint mailing list would be nice also, since
we don't necessarily follow the wnpp list, and it is easy to miss an
entry among the huge haystack that is the wnpp.
> Do you have any advice?
I hope i have given some, if you need more, please ask on the list and
we will help you.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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