The stable PPA will be updated for 0.4 final, but not with release
candidates.  Julianightlies will continue to track the master branch, that
is, 0.5-dev.  Creating per-version julia packages is a good idea, but not
one that will happen soon, due to my own time constraints.
-E

On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 11:33 AM, Christof Stocker <
[email protected]> wrote:

> So bottomline what does this mean for the upcoming 0.4 release. Is the deb
> not going to be updated for stable releases anymore, or are you just
> talking about managing different versions at the same time?
>
>
> On 2015-09-20 20:23, Elliot Saba wrote:
>
> Yep, Tony hit it on the head.  As the maintainer of the Ubuntu PPA, I
> definitely understand the usefulness and ease of having Julia managed by
> the system package manager, but unfortunately the build process is
> relatively difficult to debug/fix; we have to jump through quite a few
> hoops to get our source packages ready for building on the Canonical
> servers, and problems often arise and must wait a few weeks before I can
> fix them.
>
> To give you an idea of the workflow we have setup right now, the first
> step is that a job is run on the buildbots
> <http://buildbot.e.ip.saba.us:8010/waterfall?category=Packaging> called
> "package_launchpad", which gets run every time a commit passes the
> automated testing and bundles that commit up into a form ready to be
> submitted to launchpad.  The script that is run by that buildbot job is
> right here
> <https://github.com/staticfloat/julia-buildbot/blob/master/commands/launchpad.sh>.
> The results of running that script are saved on the buildbot website linked
> above, here's a link to the latest run
> <http://buildbot.e.ip.saba.us:8010/builders/package_launchpad/builds/1574/steps/Run%20launchpad.sh/logs/stdio>
> which is the first to succeed in a while, due to some incorrect
> configuration after I rebuilt the VM images a few weeks ago in preparation
> for 0.4 releases.  One of the pieces of preparation that the script
> performs is to embed a debian directory from this repository
> <https://github.com/staticfloat/julia-debian>, which gives the rules and
> metadata necessary to build a Debian package for Julia.
>
> As far as providing a `julia0.4` package, that is an interesting idea that
> may be the best way forward, but unfortunately I have many other projects
> that are vying for my attention right now.  If anyone reading this is
> interested in pushing forward on that particular effort, even if you don't
> have much experience working on this kind of stuff, please do not hesitate
> to contact me to get more information on how to start, or just start
> submitting pull requests/forking things.
>
> In the meantime, just like Tony said, I think the best bet is to use the
> generic linux tarballs for now.  In all honesty, there's really only one
> concrete benefit to the PPA binaries (other than the simple purity of
> having things managed by dpkg rather than being downloaded and installed to
> user-directories) and that is automatic updates.
>
> Now that I think about it; there's a possibility that a "dummy" .deb could
> be created that just downloads the latest `.tar.gz`, unpacks it into
> `/usr`, and calls it a day.
> -E
>
> On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 8:55 AM, Tony Kelman <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Versioning the julia package name in the ppa would be a very good idea.
>> The only reason the PPA is often out of date is that it's entirely
>> maintained by a single person who doesn't always have the time to fix
>> things that break or update things that would usually be handled
>> automatically. As I said it takes more maintenance to keep running than the
>> tarball builds, and since the PPA is Ubuntu-specific we've been encouraging
>> people to use the generic tarballs now since we have more control over
>> dependencies, public visibility to any issues that arise, and the ability
>> for multiple people to fix them. I recognize the utility in having your
>> system package manager handle updates, but it's a fair bit more maintenance
>> work. Downloading and installing a tarball to use the binaries of Julia
>> should be pretty easy, and doesn't need root access either.
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, September 20, 2015 at 8:37:57 AM UTC-7, Glen O wrote:
>>>
>>> Is there a reason why the juliareleases ppa couldn't provide a julia0.4
>>> package, separately from the currently julia package? I've seen similar
>>> things done with packages elsewhere, including within the main ubuntu
>>> repositories. Indeed, given the changes happening to the language, perhaps
>>> it's a good idea to start keeping major versions of julia separate (that
>>> is, make it julia0.3 and julia0.4, with julia being a dependency package
>>> that will pull in the latest stable julia (ie/ it will point to julia0.3
>>> until julia0.4 is properly released, then it will point to julia0.4).
>>>
>>> This also minimises issues for people who might have julia 0.3 currently
>>> installed and are actively using it, and don't want to accidentally update
>>> to 0.4 and have to alter all of their code to account for changes in the
>>> language - they would just remove the dependency package, and be guaranteed
>>> to remain with julia0.3 only.
>>>
>>> I do understand why it might be considered too much of a nuisance for
>>> the relatively short RC period, when we can wait for the proper release,
>>> but I'm probably not the only person who isn't up to using an
>>> in-development version (nightlies), but is willing to use one that might
>>> just be slightly buggy (release candidate), and who doesn't want to fiddle
>>> with installation or compilation.
>>>
>>> On Monday, 21 September 2015 00:47:10 UTC+10, Tony Kelman wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Actually it would be expected for julianightlies to be providing
>>>> 0.5-dev nightlies right now but it's been failing to update for some time
>>>> due to build system changes on master. We have more flexibility and control
>>>> over the linux tarball binaries than we do over the ppa. I don't think the
>>>> ppa has any effective mechanism to provide release candidates right now.
>>>
>>>
>
>

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