* Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org> [2022-06-05 07:13]:
Am Sat, Jun 04, 2022 at 08:22:20AM +0200 schrieb Rafael Laboissière:Just to let you know here (I need this for some R package but may be this information is helpful for others as well).I maintained the Debian package in the past: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gpclIt was removed from Debian in 2014. Should it be reintroduced ?Finally you probably know the reasons for packaging it better than me - but just license wise it should be possible now.
The gpcl package was in the non-free section in the past. I wrote it mostly because I was needing a lightweight polygon clipping library. I have also wrote Octave bindings for it.
There are other alternatives to GPC, though, like the kbool component of WxArt2d [1], Clipper [2], and CGAL [3].
For the Debian package, I have added autoconf/automake/libtool support for building a shared library for GPC. This improvement has never been adopted by the upstream author. I might try to propose it as a merge request to the new GitHub repository.[4]
I see that there is an R package that includes the GPC sources (gpclib [5]). Is this package the one that you mentioned in your original message?
Back in 2001, I decided to call the source package gpcl instead of gpc, in order to avoid a name clash with another package (I guess it was the Gnu Pascal compiler, but I am not sure). At any rate, there is no gpc package in Debian, so if we rename gpcl to gpc, I think it will be fine.
I will try to fill an ITP for gpc, as time permits. Best, Rafael Laboissière [1] https://www.wxart2d.org/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/WxArt2dInstall [2] http://www.angusj.com/delphi/clipper.php [3] https://www.cgal.org/ [4] https://github.com/rickbrew/GeneralPolygonClipper [5] https://github.com/rdpeng/gpclib