Hi Andreas Dunno if you saw it, but I had packaged 2.6 - 2.7 inclusive (plus the old versions) at https://github.com/aragilar/debian-packaging-sundials. Like Dima, I'm currently using the packaging, so it should work.
The reasoning for waiting till after the freeze is there's a number of things we need to sort out with upstream, and given their responsiveness trying to do this before the freeze seemed impractical. The issues as I see it are: 1. The matlab/octave interface seems poorly supported (upstream may or may not drop it entirely), it uses a custom build script written in matlab (which requires modification to work with octave), which means we don't get multiarch easily. We could have dropped the interface, but it currently works (afaik), and the real solution (split it out and make it a proper octave package on octave-forge) would be time consuming and probably wouldn't happen before the freeze. 2. Upstream has broken the ABI in every release without bumping the so number (this is the most time consuming part of packaging sundials), and don't seem to think/be aware that this is a problem. My packaging went ahead and did its own thing (given upstream's response), but that's not really a viable strategy in the long term. I also raised the ABI breaks on Fedora's bugtracker, but nothing's come of that. 3. There are no real tests, there's some examples, we'd need to ask upstream for tests (if they have any). 4. Upstream does not communicate their plans, nor have a have an open bugtracker: for example, the first I knew of the 2.7 release (as opposed to them doing a bugfix release) was when they announced it on their mailing list. 5. Upstream switched from using autotools to cmake, which lead them to drop sundials-config (script which produces the correct link flags) . As part of my packaging, I've created pkg-config files, but it doesn't help if upstream doesn't adopt them (or chooses to name them differently given the different configurations possible). I did consider uploading something to experimental in the mean time, but given there's a very real chance that what we uploaded to experimental would not match what would result from discussions with upstream, the package wouldn't of use to anybody, and probably create more confusion. If you do want get sundials into experimental, I'm happy to help, but I think efforts spent on packaging sundials are best used to get upstream on board with being an easier project to package (and to coordinate with Fedora and other distros so that upstream sees this as a push from distros, not specifically from Debian). James On 28 January 2017 at 10:14, Andreas Tille <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Dima, > > On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 01:53:21PM -0800, Dima Kogan wrote: > > > I just realised that our packaged sundials is lagging two releases > > > behind upstream. Its a bit bad to learn this right now - some days > > > after changes can make it into Stretch. :-( > > > > Hi. We talked about this a few months ago: > > > > https://lists.debian.org/debian-science/2016/10/msg00023.html > > OK - I admit I do not follow every thread on Debian Science list and > currently my interest is only due to a software that depends from > sundials (as I just learned from 2.3 :-(). > > > The conclusion was that the latest sundials removed support for octave > > and we didn't want to pull that out for stretch. So the plan was to > > defer the update until after stretch happens. Nobody complained at the > > time. > > > I AM using my sundials 2.7 packages personally, and they've been working > > ok. > > It would be a good idea to upload to experimental. > > > What do you want to do? > > Well, finally we need to follow upstream at some point in time and we > can not really stick to version 2.5. My interest is just to get the > dependency working. > > Kind regards > > Andreas. > > -- > http://fam-tille.de > > -- Don't send me files in proprietary formats (.doc(x), .xls, .ppt etc.). It isn't good enough for Tim Berners-Lee <http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/04/rms-and-tim-berners-lee-separated-at.html>, and it isn't good enough for me either. For more information visit http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html. Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence. - Henrik Tikkanen If you're not messing with your sanity, you're not having fun. - James Tocknell In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is.
