Fw: Re: opam package maintenance
Hi, sorry for this late reply, for some reason mailly.debian.org
rejected my email a couple of weeks ago when i originally sent this
reply and i've only noticed that it wasn't sent to the mailing-list last
week. After some retries and debugging with Stéphane (thanks!) it seems
that i was blacklisted and it should work now that i have subscribed to
the debian whitelist.
Here was my reply (in a plain text email just in case this also helps):
________________________________________
From: Kate Deplaix <kit-ty-kate@outlook.com>
Sent: 15 July 2024 22:10
To: Stéphane Glondu <glondu@debian.org>
Cc: debian-ocaml-maint@lists.debian.org <debian-ocaml-maint@lists.debian.org>; david@tarides.com <david@tarides.com>; Raja Boujbel <raja.boujbel@ocamlpro.com>
Subject: Re: opam package maintenance
Hi! Thanks for your reply,
> Packages are updated in stable only under exceptional circumstances, that's the definition of stable :-) And I don't see any reason to update
> opam there.
That's sad to hear from our perspective. We tried our best to backport fixes over the years to our definition of a stable branch, and not having Debian take it means all this effort was sadly in vain for a good portion of our users. But at least now we know, sorry to have assumed wrongly.
> I see opam 2.2.0 has been released only two weeks ago. Please note that
> the update of a Debian package is never automatic: someone has to do
> something. And for Debian/OCaml packages, all this work is voluntary.
> Two weeks (on even a month or two) is reasonable delay (IMHO) to update
> a package in the Debian/OCaml world (we are not so well-staffed).
Of course! My email wasn't meant to pressure you, sorry if it came out that way.
My only concern was that, not knowing the Debian policy for Stable, i was seeing signs of an unmaintained package and wanted to make sure Testing or at least Sid was up-to-date as we wanted to avoid having to backport fixes to a 3 years old codebase for another 2 years. However, now knowing the policy, it makes our work easier.
I've opened https://salsa.debian.org/ocaml-team/opam/-/merge_requests/14 to at least clean up the couple of things i noticed over the years. I hope this helps.
It looks like there isn't much else i can do for now but at least i know what to do for future releases. If you have any issues packaging the new dependencies or opam itself, feel free to ask here.
cc-ing my co-maintainers to add some more eyes.
Thanks for your work,
Warm regards,
Kate
________________________________________
From: Stéphane Glondu <glondu@debian.org>
Sent: 15 July 2024 06:58
To: Kate Deplaix <kit-ty-kate@outlook.com>
Cc: debian-ocaml-maint@lists.debian.org <debian-ocaml-maint@lists.debian.org>
Subject: Re: opam package maintenance
Hi Kate,
Le 12/07/2024 à 13:52, Kate Deplaix a écrit :
> Sorry to bother you all. As one of the opam maintainer, i would like to
> get more insights on how the debian package for opam is maintained.
>
> The package doesn't seem to have a permanent maintainer and my attempt
> to contact mehdi failed.
>
> The package currently is out-of-date in several ways:
>
> *
> stable has a 3 years out-of-date version: 2.1.2
Packages are updated in stable only under exceptional circumstances,
that's the definition of stable :-) And I don't see any reason to update
opam there.
> *
> testing is fine with 2.1.6 (although i would suggest 2.2.0)
> *
> sid is still on 2.1.6 despite 2.2.0 being out
Usually, sid is a quarantine for testing so they are in sync most of the
time.
I see opam 2.2.0 has been released only two weeks ago. Please note that
the update of a Debian package is never automatic: someone has to do
something. And for Debian/OCaml packages, all this work is voluntary.
Two weeks (on even a month or two) is reasonable delay (IMHO) to update
a package in the Debian/OCaml world (we are not so well-staffed).
I do have a QA routine to check discrepancies with the OPAM world:
https://salsa.debian.org/ocaml-team/opam-debian-switch
I run it every few weeks, and this allows us to get up-to-date OCaml
packages in Debian... usually. But it doesn't work for opam itself,
since opam is not installed with opam :-(
> I'm personally ready to help (I've already personally helped upgrade
> Alpine, Homebrew, MacPorts, Void-Linux, Archlinux, Nixpkgs), but the
> process to do that in Debian seems convoluted compared to the above
> mentioned distributions.
Of course, any help is welcome... but you you'll have to get familiar
with Debian procedures. I think there is plenty of documentation out
there. If you have some specific question, you can ask me (or here).
> How can i help? (I'm not a Debian user anymore)
> I was able to get an account on Salsa after battling with the gatekeeper
> but I'm not sure what's the next step. Untar the archive and update the
> control and rules files?
Usually, it's conceptually as easy as that, we have tools that make all
this very efficient.
I started to do it for opam, and realized new dependencies have popped.
This is usually the reason why packages take time to be updated.
(Changing the build system is another common reason.) At least
opam-0install-cudf, spdx_licenses and swhid_core are not yet in Debian,
those three will have get packaged first. The process of adding a new
package to Debian is subject to additional review and can take time,
don't hold your breath.
I will add the three mentioned packages and get back to you when I am
back on opam.
Cheers,
--
Stéphane
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