[PD] pd-else in Debian (was Re: installing pd via apt-get)

IOhannes m zmölnig zmoelnig at iem.at
Mon Sep 23 13:33:51 CEST 2019


On 9/22/19 9:10 AM, IOhannes m zmölnig wrote:
>> so maybe I could
>> include as well my other library (else)? But how?
> *you*  will need to find a Debian maintainer to include*anything*  in Debian.
> 
> luckily, i have filed an itp (intention to package) "else" for Debian a while ago.
> 
> i just haven't found the time yet.


so i had a quick look into packaging pd-else.

currently there's two (minor) obstacles:

- The somewhat unclear licensing: please clarify the licenses of all the 
files, including those that are taken from other projects [489]. (Debian 
is super-picky about license issues)

- the stability of the package. quite prominently you say that "this 
project is still in a beta stage, this means some changes may occur to 
some of the objects and backwards compatibility is not guaranteed for 
future releases until the final stable release is made available."
if pd-else keeps breaking patches created with it with every new 
release, then I'm not sure whether it is fit (yet) for inclusion in Debian.
as you have noted, Debian has rather long release cycles (about once 
every 2 years), and the package that was "in" at the time of a Debian 
release, will stay "in" for the entire lifetime of that release cycle.
If pd-else is released every month, and the package breaks API 
compatibility (say) every 4 the release, then people will end up with a 
significantly incompatible package - 6 API changes for the early 
adaptors compared to those how bet on a "stable" system (remember the 
recent thread about Pd on the RPi, where somebody was using 
Debian/stretch - which was released in june 2017).
I don't know whether the big fat stability warning is just to stay on 
the safe side (so you can always say "but i warned you" if things go 
bonkers), or whether pd-else has *actually* broken API since it's existence.

once these issues are clarified, i intend to proceed.

gfmasrd
IOhannes


[489] https://github.com/porres/pd-else/issues/489




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