At Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:06:23 +0100, Ian Lynagh wrote:
Any reason the manual steps here aren't automated?
There's not much benefit from automating them (although if someone did so, with a nice way to edit the description etc, then it would be handy). The vast majority of the time in creating Debian packages is:
We (at seereason) have a tool, cabal-debian, for automating the process. It has the following features: 1. automatically generates a working debian directory from the .cabal file with no user intervention (most of the time). It copies as much information from the .cabal file to the debian directory as possible. 2. automatically calculates build-depends during initial (or subsequent) debianization 3. checks that .cabal build-depends and debian build-depends are in-sync during dpkg-buildpackage run. 4. automatically calculates install dependencies of binary .debs during dpkg-buildpackage run. (by writing substvar files and using ${haskell:Depends} in debian/control). 5. can be used to create new debian/control and debian/changelog for an already debianized package. (Useful when information copied from the .cabal file changes in the .cabal file). As you state, most generated packages would need additional polish before they could be uploaded to Debian. The Future ---------- cabal-debian seems good enough for general release. I can imagine cabal-debian being used in three ways: 1. a way for users to quickly debianize a cabal library for local use (because going around the debian package system often leads to pain in the long run). 2. a way for debian/ubuntu developers to create a starting point for a real Debian package. 3. a way to standardize on policy issues, by encapsulating them in a tool which "Does It Right". 4. a way to create an unofficial Haskell repository with lots of packages In my opinion, cabal-debian is quite suitable for (1) already. (2) and (3) require agreement from the Haskell Debian community as to what the best practices really are, and patches to make that happen. cabal-debian currently uses: - haskell-devscripts - the cdbs extension for supporting haskell (the one posted on debian-haskell mailing list a while ago) - haskell-utils The basic build is done using the cdbs extension for Haskell (which uses haskell-devscripts). But the version dependencies are updated during the build process using a script from haskell-utils. For (4), it should be pretty easy to use cabal-debian plus this autobuilder: http://src.seereason.com/autobuilder/ to easily create a repository of debian packages that not quite up to debian standards. Whether you would *want* such a thing is obviously an issue for debate: quantity vs quality. But the technology already exists if the desire is there. What's Next? ------------ We are working on getting cabal-debian uploaded to hackage, but we have some patches against haskell-devscripts, and a patch against haskell-utils. The patch against haskell-utils has not been accepted, and may possibly be rejected due to some issue with the way Debian's autobuilders work? It does not make much sense to upload cabal-debian to hackage until the supporting tools are up-to-date. So I guess we need to get our patches accepted upstream. (modifying them if needed). We have also started a tool that is essentially cabal-install + cabal-debian. It has the same purpose as cabal-install, but it debianizes the packages on-the-fly. How You Can Help ---------------- We, (at seereason), make no claims that cabal-debian does anything the right way, the best way, or even a sensible way. Our primary requirements are: 1. that cabal-debian generates sane debianization with minimal pain 2. that the generated debian packages can be built by our autobuilder. This essentially means that you should be able to build them in three steps: i. check out the source ii. install the build-depends listed in debian/control iii. run dpkg-buildpackage I believe this is slight issue with haskell-utils based packages which have a procedure more like: i. check out the source ii. run update-haskell-control iii. install build-dependencies iv. run dpkg-buildpackage If update-haskell-control generated >= build-depends instead of = build-depends, then things would work ok with our autobuilder, but possibly not with Debian's?. Anyway, the point is, we are wide open to suggestions and improvements to cabal-debian. In fact, nothing would make us happier than someone coming along and taking over the whole thing ;) Obtaining --------- cabal-debian can be obtained (via darcs get) here: http://src.seereason.com/cabal-debian/ but you will need other dependencies from here: http://src.seereason.com/ and you will need a patch to haskell-devscripts from here: http://src.seereason.com/quilt/haskell-devscripts-quilt/ and haskell-utils from here: http://src.seereason.com/quilt/haskell-utils-quilt/ Example ------- Here is an example debian directory generated by cabal-debian (which no manual modifications or intervention, AFAIK): http://src.seereason.com/debian/shellac-debian/debian/ You would need the patched haskell-devscripts/haskell-utils and possibly cabal-debian to actually build it though. j.