Re: mit-scheme testing removal (and cascading removals)

[Nick Gasson <nick@nickg.me.uk>]

On 2021-10-14 08:31, bnewbold@robocracy.org wrote:
> mit-scheme is marked for auto-removal from testing on 2021-11-06. It
> looks like this may be due to the package dropping support for i386 in
> the most recent release (11.x). Auto-removal would cascade to slib
> (due to Build-Depends), and then on to other packages like scm, jacal,
> and gauche.
>
> It is possible i'm confused or have not kept with with some policy
> change, and the removals will be resolved somehow (eg, ftp masters
> override?). But I thought it would be worth checking with folks on
> this list.
>
> For example, maybe it would be possible to iterate (again) on the slib
> Build-Depends setup.

Yes it's a bit unfortunate that now slib Build-Depends on every Scheme 
that supports slib. There was a similar problem with Gambit just after 
the last upload.

A possible solution might be to change (implementation-vicinity) to 
return somewhere user-writable like $HOME/.cache/slib/<scheme> and then 
the slibcat file would be generated automatically the first time a user 
loads slib in a particular Scheme. That avoids having to generate it as 
root in the post install, or bundling all possible slibcat files (as we 
do now).

--
Thanks,
Nick