On 04-04-2012 12:45, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
What went wrong here is that the Debian guys tried to package
something as a
system-level package when it isn't supposed to be. I don't really see
anything
wrong in the Waf dev trying to prevent this; not doing so is letting
Debian
shoot itself in the foot, only to come back to Waf later and complain,
when they
were already warned.
So, I just think you should reevaluate what you're basing your
decision on here. :)
It's not just the packaging issue that's at stake re Debian -- there's
also the way in which the developer has played games with non-free
licensing (not a good sign IMO), and the fact that the zipped-up code in
the waf script contains an obfuscated copy that is not identical to
upstream.
It's not obfuscated; the code is just rewritten to be as compact as
possible. This is part of Waf's own build process. I'm not sure this is
as bad as "obfuscated" makes it sound...
In fact, for Debian this was never about the packaging -- they only
considered packaging BECAUSE the script included a zipped-up and
obfuscated part. See
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/02/msg00207.html and in
particular the passage reading,
This means that we are distributing files derived from the waf.git
source code, but not the waf.git source code itself. This is of
course completely unacceptable in Debian. (It is not a violation of
the copyright on waf itself as waf has a permissive non-copyleft
licence; but will be a breach of the copyright on any GPL'd waf-using
package, because the GPL's requirements extend to the build system.)
I suggest the following fix:
* Upstream waf should be packaged somehow.
GPL extends to the build system? This is news to me... that seems a
little overzealous... (or maybe I'm interpreting it incorrectly)
But point taken. If that's how the GPL works, then that's how it is.
As for me, DFSG compatibility is important, so I'm not happy using a
build script that has these issues. My code would almost certainly be
released under GPL or AGPL, so I'd also fall foul of the licensing
issues identified.
I just don't think I'm seeing where the problem arises, since Waf's
license is very permissive. But IANAL, etc. ;)
I don't think it's worth discussing this further -- I don't want to turn
the d.gnu list into a big debate on Debian policy or licensing
technicalities -- but from a gdc point of view I'd really welcome ideas
on alternative build systems that work well with gdc.
Oh, don't worry - most discussions on the D newsgroups in general often
branch into rather tangential discussions; people don't really mind this
at all.
(Sorry if this sounds like I'm making trouble for the sake of it. I'm
concerned because to my mind one of the principal problems for D was for
a long time the lack of effective free/open source implementations. I'm
keen for D to be well integrated into the FOSS ecosystem, and that means
considering other aspects than just the compiler, now solved very well
by gdc.)
Not at all. This discussion has been enlightening to me as well.
(Not sure if you know, but Waf can do all of those.)
That's nice. :-)
All this being said, I don't know of any other good build tool for D
(and GDC in particular) at the moment. You may have to resort to using
Make and/or Autotools. :/
--
- Alex
