[Ubuntu] Inclusion of OSGeo MapGuide and FDO projects on UbuntuGIS

[Trevor Wekel]

Wow!  That's a great summary! Based on what I read, I didn't think we were there yet.  I will take up the discussion on mapguide-internals and fdo-internals to see if we can get some of this work scheduled.

Thanks Johan,
Trevor

-----Original Message-----
From: Johan Van de Wauw [mailto:johan.vandewauw at gmail.com] 
Sent: April 7, 2010 3:15 PM
To: Trevor Wekel
Cc: ubuntu at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Ubuntu] Inclusion of OSGeo MapGuide and FDO projects on UbuntuGIS

A perquisite for inclusion in a launchpad ppa (and certainly in
debian/ubuntu) is
that the package builds from source in debian/ubuntu.
There are a number of reasons for that, but perhaps the most important
one is security. If a security error has to be fixed, the necessary
source changes can be made and compilation can be done very
straightforward and fast.
That is also one of the major reasons why libraries should (usually)
be packed separately: if an error is fixed in one library, all the
other applications are fixed.
If you have a small library which changes a lot, you can consider
including it instead of packaging seperately (eg agg), but for bigger
libraries I would not do that. Take openssl as an example. FDO uses an
old version which misses several security updates (not something I
would like as a back end for a web application).
Many of the libraries you name have not had major breaking changes
between versions and switching to a newer version should be pretty
straightforward. It worked for all other packages in debian/ubuntu.
For libraries with incompatibilities older versions are often shipped
(eg berkeley db, boost).
* gcc 4.4
If you manage to leave out some libraries, I think porting to gcc 4.4
should not be too much work. My experience is that you sometimes have
to add a header (eg <cstdio>) but it remains the same language - I
think it is much less work to change this than to cross compile on a
different distribution. I had a brief look to fdo and it seems I had
to do this in 7 files. I will send you a patch.
*compile as root
I tried (and managed to) compile a FDO (3.4.1) package. There are
indeed a few places where something like $(DESTDIR) is missing. I
think fixing the Makefile.am is the right solution here. I realise it
is extra work, but fixing it will also be a prequisite for packaging
in whatever other distribution.
*/usr/local
Fixing this type of error would be needed to include your package in
debian, but is much less essential than the other problems. I believe
most of your users would not notice. In the meantime at least I would
consider adding the package to Ubuntugis.

Most likely there will be other hurdles to take before a mapguide
package is accepted in the main archives (at least one: check the
openssl part at: http://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html , this
is actually a bug which should be reported upstream if it has not yet
been reported.).

Anyway I appreciate the time you have spent to already create the
current packages, but I think -definitely when looking to future
updates- updating the build system to make it easier to generate a
package from source is the only way forward. Maybe you can consider
building packages from the current svn and share patches to make sure
that at least the next version will build sanely on debian/ubuntu?
Anyway - you can ask me for help if you would need it.

Johan