kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Fabrizio Tappero <fabrizio.tappero@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your lengthy e-mail. "jumping the gun" isn't my
intention. Also, I would not really say that I am particularly excited
about working on this. I just had some time and thought of improving
things a little.

We certainly speak the same language, if you want take your time and
decide what to do, please do it, I am certainly not in a hurry on
this.

Cheers
Fabrizio




On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 3:03 PM, Adam Wolf
<adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Fabrizio,
>
> I have probably spent 100 or more hours on this problem, maybe much more.
> While Cmake *can* make debs, I do not think Cmake is the way to make debs
> for Kicad for Ubuntu and Debian.
>
> I have outlined the work I am undertaking on the Kicad developer list
> previously--I can dig it up if you'd like, but my goal is to get a Ubuntu
> package that passes all the tests and is acceptable to Ubuntu developers for
> being mainlined into the official repos.  This will not be accomplished very
> easily through Cmake deb files due to the integration that has been added to
> Kicad over the last year.  One obvious case is Python.  There are literally
> 30+ pages of documentation on how to build Ubuntu and Debian packages that
> refer to Python.  In order to be accepted into mainline, we pretty much have
> to follow all that documentation.  We have to follow two different sets of
> documentation, just for Python, because we both integrate an interpreter and
> provide a Python package.
>
> I appreciate your excitement to work on this, but I worry that you're
> jumping the gun a little bit.  I'd really appreciate the help, but I want to
> make sure we're speaking the same language.
>
> As you are more interested in Debian than Ubuntu, you may want to start
> here: https://wiki.debian.org/HowToPackageForDebian
>
> Before you start reading the documentation, I'll warn you:  there are many,
> many people over the years who have tried to make "simple installers" that
> will just take existing code and crank it out into a Debian-acceptable
> installer.  This happens about every two years.  They usually work great for
> simple projects, and very poorly for complicated projects.  Even when they
> create a deb file, the deb file doesn't follow all the rules it takes to be
> included in the Debian project.
>
> That being said, there are merits to a "dumb deb builder" similar to
> checkinstall.  I think Dick just created it.  This provides a thin layer of
> metadata so you can ask the package manager about kicad files and it knows
> about them.  This is an excellent thing, and very useful for one set of
> requirements.  I don't think you can "grow" that into something that is
> acceptable for Debian/Ubuntu to include in mainstream, and I don't even know
> if that's something I recommend anyone distribute as a deb file, you know?
> If you give that deb file to someone else, I think there is little guarantee
> it'll actually work, due to dependencies.
>
> There are a whole lot of issues even beyond Python--for instance, our
> compile time branches.  I previously solved this using multiple PPAs--set up
> one PPA, install "kicad", and you get GAL support.  Setup another PPA,
> install "kicad", and you get Python support.  After a few hours of reading
> and asking upstream folks about packaging, I found out this is also a no-no,
> and we should have multiple packages that conflict with each other using the
> control file.
>
> Additionally, the reason why you don't do install dependences from apt is
> because upstream is years and years old, and kicad's dependencies have
> changed since then.
>
> Adam Wolf
> Wayne and Layne, LLC
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 3:11 AM, Fabrizio Tappero
> <fabrizio.tappero@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>> I updated the script according to Dick's suggestion and added some
>> modifications in it for "yum" people so that we are now a bigger
>> family. I also uploaded it to the web:
>> http://www.kicad-pcb.org/display/KICAD/Download
>>
>> just a question, Dick, why don't we like "sudo apt-get build-dep
>> kicad"? you removed it. Shouldn't be better to have it there? just in
>> case in the future we add some libs, some apt-get guy detect it but we
>> do not update this script accordingly.
>>
>> Dick, thanks for the "make package" thing. I think it is great ! I
>> have done some googleing and noticed that for instance slackware Linux
>> does maintain a "recent" version (03/2013) of KiCad:
>> http://slackbuilds.org/result/?search=kicad&sv=14.0
>>
>> Debian people do it too but it is 1.5 years old. I contacted the
>> maintainer but mail bounced back.
>>
>> There is also and unofficial Debian/Ubuntu apt-get repo that looks
>> very official and that we could use:
>> http://www.apt-get.org/
>>
>> The question is kind of philosophical, who should maintain packages
>> and distribute open-source software? the developers of the software or
>> the guys doing Linux distros?
>>
>> Well guys, I think lots of progress on this subject has been made
>> since two weeks ago, I think cmake is the way to make .deb. I think
>> the script on the web is great for the people who want to compile. We
>> just need an additional step adding Adam's server in the equation?
>>
>> Adam, I'll have a look at Karl's stuff and contribute to the cmake but
>> first I'd like to fix all this .desktop files and especially this
>> icons issue. It seems to me that there is a little bit of a mess
>> there.
>>
>> Regards
>> Fabrizio
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 9:13 PM, Adam Wolf
>> <adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > There have been some discussion in Debian land about changing how they
>> > package Python-y stuff, that will make a world of difference for me.  It
>> > looks like it's going through, so there's light at the end of that
>> > tunnel
>> > too.
>> >
>> > Adam Wolf
>> > W&L
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 2:10 PM, Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> CMake now builds a primitive *.deb file on Ubuntu/Mint/Debian.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> $ make package
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> It has no dependencies, so it about like using checkinstall.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Dick
>> >>
>> >>
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>> >
>> >
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>
>