A Quicklisp Debian package

[Paulo Sequeira]

On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 1:38 AM, Sebastian Tennant
<sebyte at smolny.plus.com> wrote:
>
> Lesson: Don't consider an idea a good one until you've slept on it and woken up
>        stil thinking it's good.
>
> Perhaps not everything I proposed yesterday is nonsense, but the idea of
> maintaining a one-to-one correspondence between binary ql-* packages and
> individual Quicklisp libraries is the stuff of dreams...

I agree. I also started feeling that ql-* packages would be a burden I
wasn't sure would be worth bearing.

> No, on second thoughts, using Quicklisp in conjunction with dpkg is simply not
> workable other than to install a single package (cl-quicklisp) which perhaps
> provides administrators with a script for performing site-wide Quicklisp
> operations (as demonstrated) and users with a script for querying the state of
> site-wide Quicklisp libraries, and is a Debian package that provides nothing in
> the way of dpkg dependency handling really very useful?

What you describe is basically the expectation I've been having about
the package. Would it be useful still? Well, I think so, if only to
give Quicklisp a proper status of citizen in Debian.

I recall my feelings when reading the Quicklisp setup instructions the
first time, realizing that libraries are all user-only and that no
package for it was available, not even in sid. I didn't even wanted to
try it at first, until I found the hard way that sticking only to what
was officially debianized wasn't representative of the possibilites
already available from the CL community. I could have given up trying
Lisp if it weren't for the copious recommendations of Quicklisp you
find here and there on the web.

> The only other option is an automated process by which a functional subset of
> Quicklisp projects are converted (upstream) to standalone Debian packages
> complete with the same dependency information.  This is a non-trivial task to
> say the least, something only experienced Debian packaging wizzards should even
> consider!

I've also thought about this option, specially due to the shortcomings
of Quicklisp when compared wtih dpkg (e.g. no package descriptions!
and not able to express dependencies on foreign, non-Lisp libraries
either). But yes, this definitely can't be something to be considered
in a first try.

I'm still not done going over the other materials you've posted, so
I'll be replying later about them.

Cheers,

-- 
Paulo