Bug#685307: RFS: ccl/1.8+svn15443-1 [ITP]

[Faheem Mitha]

X-Debbugs-CC: Peter Van Eynde <pvaneynd at mailworks.org>, Christoph Egger <christoph at debian.org>, openmcl-devel at clozure.com, pkg-common-lisp-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org, Faheem Mitha <faheem at faheem.info>
Package: sponsorship-requests
Severity: wishlist

Dear mentors,

I am looking for a sponsor for my package "ccl"

   * Package name    : ccl
     Version         : 1.8+svn15443-1
     Upstream Author : Clozure Associates
   * URL             : http://ccl.clozure.com
   * License         : LLGPL
     Section         : lisp

It builds those binary packages:

   ccl   - Common Lisp compiler and development system
   ccl-source - Source code files for CCL

To access further information about this package, please visit the following URL:

   http://mentors.debian.net/package/ccl

Alternatively, one can download the package with dget using this command:

   dget -x http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/c/ccl/ccl_1.8+svn15443-1.dsc

More information about CCL can be obtained from http://ccl.clozure.com.

Rationale: aka, why should Debian bother with this software?

CCL has a long history. Its ancestor Coral Common Lisp had its first
release in 1987. An earlier version of CCL was in Debian as OpenMCL,
circa the sarge release, but was later removed.

There are currently around 7 active (at least somewhat) free (in the
sense of the Debian DFSG) CL implementations, listed on
http://common-lisp.net/~dlw/LispSurvey.html, which seems in line with
my personal observations. These are

   ABCL, CMUCL, CCL, ECL, GCL, CLISP, and SBCL.

Of these, CMUCL, ECL, GCL, CLISP, and SBCL are currently in
Debian. Of this group of 7, CCL seems to be used more often than
most. SBCL is the most popular by a long way, but CCL is up
there. I'm a Common Lisp beginner, but my impresssion of CCL is that
is a high quality implementation and actively maintained. It has a
very reliable garbage collector, something that can be a weak point
in CL implementations. Also, it is fast, compared to most of the
others in this group. I have found bugs in SBCL. Thus far, I have
found none in CCL. As a Debian user, I think CCL should be in
Debian, and hope having CCL in Debian will make it more
popular. This concludes the rationale.

To initially build the package, you will need upstream binaries,
which I have packaged as ccl-bootstrap, and also uploaded to
mentors, for convenience. The package information is as follows:

   * Package name    : ccl-bootstrap
     Version         : 1.8+svn15443-1
     Upstream Author : Clozure Associates
   * URL             : http://ccl.clozure.com
   * License         : LLGPL
     Section         : lisp

It builds those binary packages:

   ccl-bootstrap - Binaries for bootstrapping Clozure Common Lisp

To access further information about this package, please visit the following URL:

   http://mentors.debian.net/package/ccl-bootstrap

Alternatively, one can download the package with dget using this command:

   dget -x http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/c/ccl-bootstrap/ccl-bootstrap_1.8+svn15443-1.dsc

My Debian packagings of ccl and ccl-bootstrap are available as
Mercurial repositories at https://bitbucket.org/faheem/ccl-debian
and https://bitbucket.org/faheem/ccl-bootstrap-debian.

For further information about building CCL, see the README.source in
the ccl packaging, e.g. at
https://bitbucket.org/faheem/ccl-debian/src/tip/README.source

Thanks to the IRC channel #debian-mentors on OFTC for much help with
packaging issues.

                                                Regards, Faheem Mitha