Hello! The Scheme programming language is notorious for its lack of standardization. The SRFI process[1] is trying to mitigate this problem. Particularily, SRFI 22[2], "Running Scheme Scripts on Unix", tries to standardize interpreter names for Scheme scripts. This is relevant to Debian as this introduces a name conflict if two implementations of Scheme both want to support SRFI 22, and thus provide the same interpreter command.
This should be solved as usual by using the alternatives system. In a talk between the package maintainers of Scheme implementations, a policy document was formulated which expresses the ideas and concerns of all parties involved. This policy draft can be found at http://people.debian.org/~forcer/debian-scheme-policy/debian-scheme-policy.html/ The essence of the document is that a) The interpreters defined in SRFI 22 should be managed by update-alternatives b) Implementations should Provides: the appropriate interpreter names c) Scripts should Depends: on the appropriate interpreter names The problem with b) and c) is that there's no standard available to portably install Scheme modules as Debian packages, which somewhat lowers the usability of the virtual packages, as libraries that are required for a script might not be available, and no Depends: line will make it available. Still, this at least allows to depend on SRFI 22 implementations. One other concern was that this policy talks a lot, but says little. It can be summarized easily, as seen in the enumeration above. The proposition was to use something like this instead: Please use update-alternatives to provide /usr/bin/scheme-r5rs, /usr/bin/... if appropriate. Priorities should reflect the relative maturity and completeness of the implementations, typically ranging from 10 to 50. Packages should "Provides: scheme-r5rs" etc. if the named functionality provided is standards-complete, or nearly so. This is of course much shorter, but lacks the examples and detail. As for virtual packages, this policy would create: - scheme-r4rs - scheme-r5rs - scheme-ieee-11878-1900 - scheme-srfi-0 - scheme-srfi-7 - scheme-srfi-55 I have not yet created the bug report against debian-policy, as this discussion might conclude that the virtual packages should not be created. Any comments on the proposal, or the mentioned problems of the proposal? Greetings, -- Jorgen [1] http://srfi.schemers.org/ [2] http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-22/srfi-22.html -- Debian GNU/Linux Developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.forcix.cx/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
