[SciPy-user] Debian package(s)?

[Steve M. Robbins]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 08:43:22PM +0100, Francesc Alted wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 08:57:20PM +0200, Pearu Peterson wrote:
> > However, I have noticed that few debianized packages either in their 
> > tar-ball or in their CVS contain debian/ directory containing necessary
> > files for creating deb-files. I was hoping that we could maintain this
> > directory inside scipy CVS repository so that debian packaging burden will
> > be more distributed among developers. The same applies also for chaco and
> > f2py.
> 
> That could be nice, but have in mind that it is always the Debian developer
> who has to decide the correct debian scripts. So, including a debian/
> directory in distribution could be a bit of a mess if developer decides to
> change something. Maybe Steve can give his opinion on that.

Having the debian directory in upstream CVS can be useful for those
who don't want to use packages from the debian servers.  

However, as Francesc alluded to, the upstream debian directory could
diverge from what appears in the "official" debian package, which
reduces its value, somewhat.  There are a variety of reasons for the
divergence.  Often, especially when the debian maintainer is not one
of the upstream developers, it just bit-rots.  Sometimes (rarely)
there is outright disagreement about what to put in there, e.g. for
the dependencies.

Having debian in the upstream CVS works best when the debian
maintainer has write access to it.  I do this for one package I
maintain.  When this issue comes up on the debian mailing lists, the
concensus opinion is that it is not usually helpful, and sometimes it
is a nuisance.


> Anyway, if "before Christmas 2002" is a tentative date for releasing scipy
> 0.2, let's start working right now in debian package to be able to publish
> it at the same time than 0.2 announce (testing well the debian package would
> consume a few weeks).

Sounds good.  Don't forget f2py.  Scipy will need to build-depend on
it, so it needs to be packaged first.  

We had a discussion about f2py, scipy, and "scipy_distutils" back
in August, starting at:
  http://www.scipy.org/site_content/mailman?fn=scipy-dev/2002-August/001109.html

Unless things have changed recently, the problem is that both f2py and
scipy want to install scipy_distutils.  I think the suggestion was
that f2py sources should build the scipy_distutils package, and that
scipy should not.  This might need some fiddling in debian/rules to
prevent scipy from installing it.

I'm a little muddled now as to when and how the scipy_distutils gets
used.  I think that f2py uses those files at runtime.  So they have to
be installed when building scipy (i.e. when running f2py).  But I
recall someone claiming that scipy doesn't need the distutils at
runtime. (?)

-Steve