Consider packaging libmozjs185-dev?

[Mike Hommey]

On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 03:20:28AM -0700, Vincent Cheng wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm currently attempting to package 0 A.D., an open-source RTS game, for
> Debian, with the help of the Debian Games team. However, a potential problem
> is that 0 A.D. bundles Spidermonkey with the rest of the source code, and a
> discussion took place in the Debian Games' mailing list on how to resolve
> this. One of 0 A.D.'s developers has followed our discussion and offered his
> stance on the issue [1], noting that Spidermonkey releases often break
> compatibility with older releases, and that 0 A.D. relies on a specific
> version of Spidermonkey (1.8.5 [2]); porting it to a newer version could be
> more trouble than it would be worth.
> 
> I would like to ask whether the Debian Mozilla team is able/willing to
> package and/or maintain this specific version of Spidermonkey (in the form
> of a new package, e.g. libmozjs185-dev); I would be glad to assist in any
> way possible, given that 0 A.D. relies on this. The only other alternative
> (besides asking upstream to just port 0 A.D. to a newer version of
> Spidemonkey) would be to embed Spidermonkey code in 0 A.D.'s source tarball,
> which probably isn't the preferred course of action.

Technically, libmozjs185 is already in Debian, in the experimental
suite, as libmozjs4d, with only a few differences (mostly library name,
and pkg-config file). I do plan to make it compatible (i.e. rename the
package), but I'm not sure I want to go into the pain to have long term
support for something that will become outdated pretty fast.

Mike