Slowly giving up on most packages

Sun Jul 19 03:35:30 UTC 2009

Hi there!

It is with big sad feelings that I write this e-mail, since I have
decided that I need to face reality: I have no more time to properly
maintain Common Lisp packages, because I do not use some of them anymore
and I have been more and more implicated in supporting Debian on the
Openmoko smartphones.

Here a more detailed view of the situation...

- StumpWM is the WindowManager I use, I will continue to maintain it.

- CLISP is my preferred CL implementation (and the one I use for
  StumpWM), which means that I will not orphan it.  I will prepare the
  famous 2.47 upload here at DebCamp9, thus in the next days:

    http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-common-lisp-devel/2009-April/001232.html

- all the BESE tools will be removed in one week if no one from this
  list or upstream one (to which I will write shortly after this mail)
  will show up in one week.  Upstream development has stalled (the
  software is quite robust), but I am not really sure there is a Debian
  userbase, since PopCon data show no recent installations.

- ITP #359348 about cl-rfc2109 will be tagged as wontfix and closed, for
  mainly two reasons: first, it ships part of RFC2109 (it was once
  rejected because of that and the negotiation with upstream did not
  find a solution) and, second, the only reason for packaging it was
  because UnCommon Web depends on it, thus since a (long) time ago I
  abandoned the idea of packaging UCW...

    http://bugs.debian.org/359348

- ParenScript is still actively developed by upstream, but since this
  one as well was a dependency for UCW, I will simply ask for removal.
  Moreover, because of darcs problem, the Debian version is lagging
  behind upstream:

    http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-common-lisp-devel/2008-October/001042.html

- rfc2388 was another dependency for UCW, then later used (and still) by
  Hunchentoot: it must be kept, but someone should step in...

- S-XML was my first Debian package: it is in sync with upstream and
  must be kept since it is a dependency for cl-soap, but, again, someone
  should step in...

- trivial-sockets is no more developed upstream and it has been
  superseded by cl-usocket (read below), I will ask for its removal.

Now, a look at other packages I worked on and whose destiny should be
probably discussed more widely...

- cedilla: upstream is at version 0.6, the same in Debian, with no bugs.
  I would propose to remove it, but I think it should be kept, since
  a2ps does not deal with Unicode (the only other Unicode-aware text
  renderer available on Debian is gnome-u2ps):

    http://bugs.debian.org/180236

- cl-gd: upstream is at version 0.5.6, the same in Debian, with one
  opened bug which I will check if still present and in case forward
  upstream.

- cl-geodesics: I will ask for its removal (no recent PopCon
  installations).  This could have happened before, my fault:

    http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=494404#15

- cl-irc: upstream at version 0.8.1, the same in Debian, with no bugs.
  Upstream last SVN commit is dated back to March 2009, thus I would
  assume it is still developed.

- cl-rsm-random: upstream last released is dated back to 2004, are all
  cl-rsm-* (rsm stands for R. Scott McIntire) packages still helpful?

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/com-lisp-utils/

- cl-sdl: upstream at version 0.2.2, the same in Debian, with no bugs.
  Even if it is really old (2004), it has a userbase, with 24 recent
  PopCon installations out of a total of 169, thus it should be kept.

- cl-usocket: upstream at version 0.4.1, the same in Debian, with no
  bugs.  Upstream is still active and since this is the trivial-sockets
  successor, it should be kept.

- ecl: Peter took back maintainership, I will hide in the dark ;-)

- hyperspec: since this is no more than a download wrapper for contrib
  material, I see no reason to remove it.  I will fix the two opened
  bugs and then stop working on it:

    http://bugs.debian.org/hyperspec

- ironclad: upstream is at 0.27, Debian at 0.11, thus the package should
  at least be updated to the latest upstream.  However, since the
  original maintainer did not show any more interest in it, I would ask
  for its removal, together with cl-kpax which AFAIK is dead upstream
  and was already saved once from removal:

    http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=505196#22

- libsigsegv: upstream is at 2.6, Debian at 2.5, thus the package should
  be updated.  This I think should also solved the FTBFS on avr32:

    http://bugs.debian.org/533680

  I am not sure what to do with the other open bug about 32-bit
  libraries on 64-bit sparc, which seems to have a clear consensus at
  least for people used to sparc systems (just in case, I am not):

    http://bugs.debian.org/511025

- slime: I still use it from time to time, but since Peter does a better
  job than me as maintainer, I will hide in the dark as I have already
  done for ECL ;-)

- tbnl: I will simply ask for removal, as it was superseded by
  Hunchentoot.  The transitional period was longer than I planned:

    http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-common-lisp-devel/2008-October/001024.html

- url-rewrite: upstream is at 0.1.1, Debian at 0.1.0, thus the package
  should be updated and kept, since it is a dependency for Hunchentoot.
  However, since the original maintainer did not show any more interest
  in it, someone should step in...

- xml-to-sexp: no real upstream development, since from upstream website
  this "approach is trivial, robust (since it uses a high-quality XML
  parser), mostly portable, and for many uses acceptably fast".
  However, there is a 3-year-old wishlist bug which should have at least
  an answer:

   http://bugs.debian.org/392283

That is all for the first DebCamp9 day, all the other work will be
delayed until "tomorrow"...

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca
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