Packaging CL libs and apps for debian

[Faré]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 5:11 AM, Dimitri Fontaine <dim at tapoueh.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm maintaining pgloader (https://github.com/dimitri/pgloader) and have
> picked Common Lisp for the version of it. Of course, I'm using a bunch
> of CL libs, and those are really easy to install in a Quicklisp
> development environment.
>
> Now comes the time to package the application for debian (and others),
> and I'm looking into what it takes to be doing that. Apparently the best
> way to doing it would be to package each dependency not already in
> debian separately, then Depends: on them somehow.
>
> I've been reading the Common Lisp in Debian Manual at the following
> address and I've created a couple of packages modelled after cl-puri
> (which looked like the easier to duplicate):
>
>   http://pkg-common-lisp.alioth.debian.org/clid/clid.html/ch-clc.html
>   http://pgsql.tapoueh.org/cl-debian/
>
> Now, I'm confused as to how to validate such a packaging. My reading of
> the manual is that using sbcl, I should be able to (require :package)
> once it's been provided with apt-get install. It's not the case here
> either for cl-puri or my own cl-drakma packages:
>
>   Distributor ID: Debian
>   Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 7.1 (wheezy)
>   Release:        7.1
>   Codename:       wheezy
>
>   $ dpkg -l cl-puri cl-drakma
>   ...
>   ii  cl-drakma      1.3.8-1      all          Common Lisp HTTP client
>   ii  cl-puri        1.5.5-1      all          Common Lisp Portable URI Library
>
>   $ sbcl --eval '(require :puri)'
>   ...
>   debugger invoked on a SB-INT:EXTENSION-FAILURE in thread
>   #<THREAD "main thread" RUNNING {1002978E23}>:
>     Don't know how to REQUIRE PURI.
>   ...
>
>   $ sbcl --eval '(require :drakma)'
>   ...
>   debugger invoked on a SB-INT:EXTENSION-FAILURE in thread
>   #<THREAD "main thread" RUNNING {1002978E33}>:
>     Don't know how to REQUIRE DRAKMA.
>   ...
>
> So, a couple of questions:
>
>   - what is the best way to package pgloader in debian, where I want to
>     ship a self-contained binary image (/usr/bin/pgloader)?
>
>   - if I am to package about 20 CL libs, how do I make sure that they
>     work the way they are supposed to be working?
>
Dear Dim,

which version of ASDF are you using?
There is a bug in ASDF 3.0.2 (as currently used by SBCL),
which causes it to fail to properly default XDG_DATA_DIRS to
/usr/local/share:/usr/share
and thus to not see Debian-installed software.
It's fixed in ASDF 3.0.3, or 3.1.0.x.

Also, I recommend asdf:load-system over require, because
it's both more portable and doing the right thing wrt upgrade.

I seem to have very limited clout with the SBCL developers,
and refrained from insisting that they upgrade to 3.0.3,
reserving whatever little influence I have for release 3.1.1
that I've been hoping to happen for months.
But if your voice may have more influence than mine.
3.0.3 has been stable for over 6 months now.

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
Sure, we must render unto Caesar what is due to Caesar. But what is that?
Any and all specie he coined that we possess, or 23 stab wounds?