[Pkg-d-devel] Attempt to build BioD blocked by undeaD and missing module string (Was: How to build D source)

[Matthias Klumpp]

2017-02-26 20:17 GMT+01:00 Andreas Tille <andreas at an3as.eu>:
> [...]
>> but in general I would
>> strongly recommend to not use dub at all for Debian packaging.
>> It has a lot of issues which make it a pain to work with in the
>> context of Debian packaging, some of the issues are summarized at
>> https://gist.github.com/ximion/fe6264481319dd94c8308b1ea4e8207a
>>
>> I did packaging with dub once, a d/rules file would look similar to
>> this: https://anonscm.debian.org/git/pkg-packagekit/appstream-generator.git/tree/debian/rules?id=60dcc4c6e716f8ddbcf549f40bad0f5b800cb398
>>
>> No package in Debian uses dub however, because it creates long-term
>> maintenance pain. The much better option is to submit a patch upstream
>> to build with either Automake, cmake or Meson. I strongly recommend
>> Meson here, because Meson configuration is very easy to write and it's
>> D support is already there (while it needs to be added to cmake with a
>> lot of macros, and Automake is just annoying to use in general).
>>
>> Here is an example for a simple Meson build configuration for a very
>> small static D library:
>> https://github.com/repeatedly/mustache-d/commit/4e694202b02014871a767782606bacaf1422a3e2
>
> I'd fully trust your insight here but I admit Meson is totally new to me
> and crafting a Meson control file for a library without having any idea
> about D is a bit over my current status of knowledge.  So I either need
> to use what upstream provides or ask here for help.

D is really easy to write if you know a bit of C and maybe Python or Java ^^
Writing a Meson build definition is trivial too, I can write on for
this project if you want and sibmit it upstream.

>> > Ah, I was looking at upstream git master which contains this dependency
>> > in dub.json:
>> > "dependencies": {
>> >         "undead": "~>1.0.6"
>> > },
>> >
>> >> bio/bam/bai/indexing.d(38,8): Error: module string is in file 'core/std/c/string.d' which cannot be read
>> >>
>> >> This seems to be critical.  Do you have any hint?
>> >
>> > Maybe this PR would help?
>> > https://github.com/biod/BioD/pull/23
>>
>> Which D compiler do you use for building? LDC or GDC? I would
>> recommend LDC here, since it supports the latest D runtime and
>> standard library versions, while GDC is lagging behind a lot.
>> The ideal solution here would be to port BioD away from using
>> deprecated stuff, but I am not sure how feasible this is - would be
>> nice to at least ask upstream on whether they accept patches for it.
>> Otherwise, undeaD needs to be in Debian first.
>
> I admit I have no idea how to do this.  Its the first time I see D code
> at all.  May be it would be even better if the Debian D team could
> package BioD which I need for some other package as a pre-dependency.

I'd rather not want that to happen - the D team is currently mostly me
(and Markos), and packaging a library which we don't use is a bad
idea. I have too many packages already and I fear I will not be able
to adequately maintain them if I have too many and don't even use
them.
However, I could help with the packaging. I'll see whether BioD is
easy to port away from std.streams (doesn't look like it
unfortunately) and if not I could supply Meson build definitions to
the projects.

Is BioD a normal shared library? What are you doing with it?

Cheers,
    Matthias

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