[m-dev.] Mercury in Debian 1.3

[Tyson Richard DOWD]

> 
> I don't know whether others are aware of this.
> 
> Debian 1.3 (a popular Linux distribution) was released on the 2nd of
> June.  It appears Mercury 0.6.1 has been packaged into a Debian package.

I didn't get any response from this last time. I'm willing to deal with
issues arising from this (web page updates, talking to Milan Zamazal,
merging diffs into the main development line, etc). Does anyone have any
objections to this?

(Here's the rest of the original mail).

> It is one of the standard packages in Debian 1.3 (that is, it's in
> the supported packages, along with tk and gcc, etc). This is slightly
> problematic, as it has been called 0.6.2, but it is unlikely to cause
> any confusion, since the only 0.6.2 we have released is a Windows
> binary release.
> 
> Mostly this is good news: it will be distributed on CDs everywhere (we
> can probably expect tens, if not hundreds of thousands of CDs with
> Mercury on them to be distributed -- not that everyone will install it of
> course). And users of other Linux distributions will probably be able to
> use it too, since most of them support cross-distribution installation
> programs now, or will soon (eg RedHat can install Debian packages).
> 
> A couple of issues arise from this, however:
> 
> 	- We should probably mention this on the web page, and in the
> 	  release notes for the next release.
> 	- Diffs have been made to the distribution source in order to
> 	  get it to install correctly, and debianify it. These are not
> 	  major (mainly renaming `mc' to `mercury', as `mc' has long
> 	  been the name for the Linux Midnite Commander program, and is
> 	  also used for Modula compiler).
> 	  We should probably integrate these diffs back into the main
> 	  sources as best we can.
> 	- We may want to release our own Debian package with the next
> 	  release, or work with the packager:
> 		  Milan Zamazal <pdm at fi.muni.cz>
> 
> The package is at:
> http://www.debian.org/Packages/dist/devel/mercury.html
> 
> The diffs are at:
> ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/stable/source/devel/mercury_0.6.2-1.diff.gz
> 

-- 
       Tyson Dowd           # 
                            #  Surreal humour isn't eveyone's cup of
     trd at cs.mu.oz.au        #  fur.
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~trd #