[libvoikko] HFST support to libvoikko in Debian and Ubuntu?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2016-02-24 14:52 GMT+02:00 Tino Didriksen <mail at tinodidriksen.com>:
>> Secondly, I need to consider Ubuntu too when it comes to enabling new
>> functionality in libvoikko. It's more complicated because Voikko is
>> part of the 'main' repository (Canonical supported packages) due to
>> being in the default Finnish installation. That means that all direct
>> dependencies and build dependencies need to be in 'main' repository
>> too. If I would now upload a new libvoikko to Debian, it couldn't be
>> built in Ubuntu. And I don't want to fork libvoikko in Ubuntu to build
>> without HFST.
>
> Wouldn't it be easier to "remove" it all from the main Ubuntu repo and let
> it fall back to being pulled from Debian, since it's all available in Debian
> anyway?

They are already automatically pulled from Debian. All main packages
that don't have Ubuntu specific changes are included in the automatic
syncs too. So libvoikko, suomi-malaga/voikko-fi, libreoffice-voikko,
tmispell-voikko and now foma have been updated in Ubuntu without any
actions. The problem is that packages part of the default installation
- like official language support - are required to be in main, and so
hfst and hfst-ospell need to eventually be there too. But as
explained, it's mostly a matter of paperwork.

This boundary management between main <-> universe repositories via
main inclusion requests is an Ubuntu specific process where they want
to understand where Canonical provides eg CVE security updates and
where it's up to the community at large.

So technically if the to-be-uploaded libvoikko from Debian would be
auto-synced to Ubuntu as it is now, it would arrive automatically in
the proposed repository but would not build because the buildd:s would
catch the new build dependency that's not yet in main. That's what I'd
like to solve and it sounds like there is enough interest in it that
it will not be a problem.

> CC'ed Kartik Mistry. As soon as needed? Would it make sense to move to
> collab-maint? The only reason it is under Debian Science is historical,
> because the Apertium packages got their start in life there, and so all
> Apertium dependencies inherited that.

No hurry, but it'd be nice to get it in shape and building for all
architectures (https://bugs.debian.org/815157). If I would upload the
new libvoikko to experimental now, it would only build for amd64
currently.

-Timo