[racket] Possible to install both plt-scheme from repo and racket from racket-lang.org?

Hi all,

> On Aug 15, Laurent wrote:
>> On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 18:54, Todd O'Bryan wrote:
>> 
>> > One of my dreams has been to write a script of some sort that
>> > would build a .deb for Eli automatically when he packages up the
>> > latest version. Then it could be uploaded to the Ubuntu repo and
>> > the maintainer wouldn't have to manually convert it each time.
>> 
>> That would be marvelous.

Wouldn't this just mean that Eli would become the maintainer of the
package, rather than an Ubuntu/Debian developer?  I'm not sure what
Ubuntu's process is, but I'm pretty sure you have to be a registered
Debian developer to upload to the repository.  Thus, even if the build
process outputs .debs, someone still has to take on the
responsibilities of maintaining the package in Debian (receiving bug
reports coming from Debian BTS, etc.) if those .debs are going to make
it into the repositories.

For what it's worth, I have filed a Debian bug requesting that they
update the existing plt-scheme package to Racket:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=593614

(Even in Sid/Unstable, Debian only has PLT Scheme 4.2.4; I couldn't
find any references to plans to package Racket. They may just not know
about it.)

> The problem is that both .deb files and .rmp files are designed so
> that you package the source with instructions on how to compile them
> into binaries.  But our build process produces the binary packages and
> therefore going from there to .deb/.rpm files is very awkward.
>
> (And a spec file that goes from the source to a binary package is
> obviously possible, but requires more distro-specific knowledge than
> what I have.)

I spent some time yesterday digging into the packaging process.  It is
a bit complicated, and I'm not sure how much has changed in the build
process since the last PLT Scheme release, but to me it looks like
most of the spec file logic is already there, so creating a Racket
package based on the existing package shouldn't be too difficult for a
Debian maintainer.

I'm new to Racket and this list (I've been lurking for a while).  If
someone could check that the bug report I sent is accurate, that
would be great -- I hope it turns out to be helpful!

Richard