[fpc-pascal] FPC 3.0 deb packages?

[Karoly Balogh (Charlie/SGR)]

Hi,

On Mon, 5 Sep 2016, Jon Foster wrote:

> After I banged on it for many hours applying several crude patches it
> finally makes packages again. But all of this leads me to believe that
> Debian packages for FPC are no longer maintained / supported? If so
> what's the story? Maybe my crude hacks could be put to use or I could
> help out some way?

Well, I guess the main issue is, Debian splits the FPC "packages" into
separate packages. :) Because it not only installs the package, but all of
its dependencies (for example C static link libs), therefore a global FPC
"packages" package with all its dependencies would be *HUGE*. But maybe
for 3.0 that decision should have been modified, and Debian should have
bundled a 'set of packages' as a .deb package, instead of each package as
a separate .deb alone... I mean the various FCL or the various RTL
packages are certainly just one "package" from the user PoV...

And yes, I'm not sure if the .deb packaging is still maintained in FPC's
own build system. Maybe the people doing the actual packaging for Debian
could help you there?

 > My current need is the StrUtils unit, which I must say I'm shocked to
> find is not part of the core RTL but is in a package?!?! I don't get
> that but that's your decision.

Again, that's because FPC doesn't think about "packages" the way Debian
and Linux distributions in general think. Remember, we deploy the same
structure on all of our supported platforms. We even provide Linux binary
builds, where "packages" is just one archive, with a specific directory
structure and that's it.

So we moved out large chunks from the RTL (including strutils) to separate
packages, because it reduces compiler build times and therefore speeds up
development. Also, it's makes easier the maintenance of some RTL features,
which are in fact separate from the rest of the RTL really. I guess the
Debian packaging situation was simply not considered while making that
decision, given most FPC developers themselves don't use distribution
provided packages.

Anyway, packages not finding a given unit in another package could be
probably fixed by adding additional dependencies to that other package.

That said, if anyone feels like helping out with the current packaging
situation on whatever platform, he's certainly very welcomed to do so. :)

Cheers,
--
Charlie