On Tue, 20 May 2025 16:06:25 +0200 Antoine Le Gonidec <deb...@vv221.fr> wrote:
> Mono was orphaned last year, and I took over its maintenance because > I rely on it to run some non-free video games (not redistributable, > so not packaged into Debian), so I can unvendor the Mono runtime > shipped with these games and use the Debian-provided runtime instead. > > What this means is that my interest as a maintainer is mostly focused > on the runtime binaries and libraries, to the exclusion of anything > related to using Mono as a development platform. Sadly this (the > development platform) is taking a big part of what the packaging is > about, and I end up working alone on something I have no real > interest in and get no fun from. > > So at first I was simply thinking about removing mono-devel and all > libmono*-dev libraries after Trixie release, keeping only the runtime > packages. But I got some feedback from people who would really like > to keep the ability to develop Mono software on Debian, and would > rather keep these libraries packaged. > > In addition, there are still 14 reverse build-dependencies on > mono-devel: > - cecil > - de4dot > - dnlib > - gnome-subtitles > - hexbox > - keepass2 > - keepass2-plugin-keepassrpc > - log4net > - nini > - openmcdf > - opentk > - quickroute-gps > - repetier-host > - smuxi > > Since I do not really have the motivation nor the skills to keep > maintaining this development platform, all of these would have to go > away if I stay alone in the so-called Debian Mono "Team". > > On the other hand, if other people *really* want to keep the ability > to build Mono/C# software relying on Debian-provided package, I’m > more than willing to share the load and restore the "Team" part in > "Debian Mono Team". I'd be happy to help if I can find the time to (which I will try hard to do). My primary interest in Mono is to be able to develop C# applications in Debian without resorting to the (IMO horrible) modern .NET platform offered by Microsoft. I have at least one major (private) project written in C# for use on Debian systems, and am interested in keeping that project usable on Forky and newer. > Even if you don’t have time to dedicate to long term maintenance, > drive-by contributions would be most welcome. If the state of these > packages is improved, it would lead to a much lighter maintenance > burden afterwards, and might restore the motivation that I am now > lacking. > > Here are examples of tasks that could be picked up and would help me > a lot: > - bugs triage, many are really old and might no longer apply to the > build of Mono currently shipped in Debian > - patches clean up, the current state is many patches maintained as > git branches and several others as diffs in debian/patches. I would > like the git-based ones to all be converted into individual diffs > tracked in debian/patches > - lintian clean-up (adding overrides is not cleaning-up), the current > tracker page reports 2 errors and 407(!) warnings > - maintenance takeover of orphaned Mono build-dependencies: > cli-common and libgdiplus > > In addition, even if mono-devel is going to stay, another less > impactful removal I was planning is the alternative Boehm garbage > collector, in favour of keeping only the default SGen one. Would > anyone be missing this GC if it were to go? I personally don't think I have any problems with the Boehm garbage collector being gone. If no one else is interested in keeping it, I'd be happy to do what's needed to remove it in the first fixup upload I prepare for sponsorship. Aaron > If no one manifests any interest in helping with Mono maintenance, I > plan to start removing packages after the release of Trixie. Whatever > happens, *nothing* is going to be removed from Trixie, but please > don’t wait until Forky is almost there before reacting. At this point > it is going to be far too late. > > If I am to go further with the removal, I will open bugs against the > affected packages probably sometime around the release of Trixie. > > PS: No need to keep all the CC emails if the discussion keeps going, > I only added them to send a ping to all people who manifested > interest on this topic or are maintaining a package that would be > affected by this removal. On the other hand, please keep me as CC, as > I am not subscribed to this mailing list yet.
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