On 12.10.24 14:37, Ilias Tsitsimpis wrote: > Hi Ben, > > On Sat, Oct 12, 2024 at 12:30PM, Ben Franksen wrote: >> I see that the darcs package (https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/darcs) >> seems to be stuck at an old version (2.16.5) for some time, which fails >> to build due to missing dependencies. As one of the main developers I >> would like to ask the package maintainers what we can do to help get >> darcs into debian again, preferrably with a more current version. We >> have released 2.18.3 some time ago but I am willing to put out another >> release to resolve potential dependency problems. > > darcs in Debian currently lacks an active maintainer. The Debian Haskell > group has stepped up to maintain this package, but since this group is > currently responsible for more than 1000 Haskell packages, we don't have > the time to resolve issues for individual packages. Everything that > doesn't work out-of-the box usually stays behind. > > Unfortunately, this is the case for darcs. darcs is not part of Stackage > (which we use in Debian in order to make sure that all the Haskell > libraries play nice together) which means that most of the time doesn't > work with the set of packages we have in Debian (that was the case with > Stackage LTS 21 which we were using up until now, and you can see this > here https://bugs.debian.org/1054953). > > In addition, the latest version of darcs now depends on strict-identity, > which is not part of Debian (hence someone should package it), is not > part of Stackage (which means it's less likely to be packaged in Debian) > and also seems to be abandoned (no upload for almost 10 years, no > replies to issues/patches). > > Lastly, I recently opened issue https://bugs.debian.org/1082790, to > document all of the above issues and see if there is interest to keep > darcs in Debian. > > If I had to suggest an action in order to keep darcs in Debian, I would > say please add darcs in Stackage. It helps us make sure that it builds > with the set of libraries we have in Debian. It also helps to prevent > using deprecated/abandoned software as it's the case with > strict-identity now). > > Hope the above helps,
I see. Thanks for the detailed explanations. I will try to find out what is needed to get darcs back into stackage; shouldn't be that hard. Will report back here when we achived that. Cheers Ben
