[Pkg-electronics-devel] GHDL and Debian

[Wesley J. Landaker]

On Sunday, May 26, 2013 04:07:47 Brian Drummond wrote:
> On Sat, 2013-05-25 at 18:16 -0700, Jon Taylor wrote:
> > 
> > I just installed Ubuntu latest on my new laptop, and when attempting
> > to get GHDL installed I found out about this:
> > 
> > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=696548
> > 
>
> TL/DR : if you're not up to building gcc from source, sorry there will
> be a wait.
> 
> I knew Wesley was looking into this but I didn't know he gave up from
> time pressures; he only reported this to Debian, not here.

Well, I'm not *completely* dead yet. =) I haven't retired from Debian, nor 
have I'm *totally* given up -- but, this isn't the first time I've mentioned 
some troubles (and had somewhat disheartening replies), e.g.:

https://mail.gna.org/public/ghdl-discuss/2012-01/msg00007.html

But yes, sadly, I'm very strapped for time in relation to what the GHDL 
package in Debian requires. Due to the many problems with keeping GHDL up-
to-date and working with new compilers and on all currently-support Debian 
architectures <https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=ghdl>, just 
keeping GHDL *working* in Debian (not even counting upgrades or anything) 
has become a lot more work than it used to be. Although I plan to continue 
to contribute how I can, I really am hoping to find someone(s) to adopt the 
GHDL Debian package.

Now, the current Debian GHDL package in unstable does work fine currently, 
due to some NMU package work done by Artur Rona. The package is removed from 
Debian's testing, which means GHDL will not go into stable Debian releases 
currently, but it is usable on any Debian system by pointing to the unstable 
repository and installing from there.

http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/ghdl.html

Joris van Rantwijk also has made some upgraded deb packages outside of the 
Debian infrastructure, which are available here:

http://jorisvr.nl/ghdl_debian.html

I really want GHDL to succeed and to work well in Debian, and I'll do what I 
can to help, but I'm not sure I have time to champion it any more; certainly 
I do not have time in the near future. A good path forward may be to put 
together a team of interested folks to maintain a good Debian package going 
forward, either based on my work in Git <git://git.debian.org/git/collab-
maint/ghdl.git> (which needs some changes to get up to date), or starting 
from Joris' external package (which needs some changes to follow Debian's 
package requirements), and/or by integrating Debianization more closely into 
upstream development (which BTW, could grealy benefit from moving to Git). 

Of course, I'd love to also see us in the Debian+GHDL niche collaborating 
more efficiently and directly with the current upstream (which currently 
appears to me to de facto be Brian Drummond, although the original author, 
Tristan Gingold may still be working on it as well) as well as package 
maintainers from Ubuntu and Fedora and getting more of the hacks that 
distros are having to do into GHDL upstream, but it seems to me that is 
going to require at least one someone with enough time and motivation to 
coordinate things.

Anyway, I'm cross-posting this to GHDL's ghdl-discuss and the Debian pkg-
electronics team mailing lists, and CCing those directly involved in those 
two threads, or if I mentioned you by name in this e-mail. For those 
interested in the state of GHDL and Debian, I'd suggest subscribing to both 
of those mailing lists.

Also, here are links to the two relevent threads I'm connecting with this e-
mail, as I don't think all interested parties are all fully connected and 
communicating yet. =)

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-electronics-devel/2013-
May/003212.html

https://mail.gna.org/public/ghdl-discuss/2013-05/msg00002.html

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