Debian packages for D libraries

[Thomas Koch]

Hi,

I already asked on D.learn without much response[1]. I'm just starting to 
learn D (coming from Pascal, PHP, Java) and it feels hard to get started 
without a single D library packaged in Debian. So I thought we could start 
getting the libraries from the google code apt repo into official Debian[2].

[1] "Packaging D libraries, cross compiler compatibility"
[2] http://code.google.com/p/d-apt/issues/detail?id=1

The open issues seem to be:

- Where do header files go? see thread in this group: "I think we need to 
standardize where D headers are to be installed"

- Where do shared libraries go?

- Does it matter which compiler produced a shared library? If so, how to 
deal with it? It would be possible to compile d libraries when the user 
installs them for every D compiler present on the system. A similar thing is 
done for emacs lisp files.

- Yes, dmd could perfectly be put in Debian non-free. GDC and DMD should 
both provide the virtual package name "d-compiler". Debians alternatives 
system can then be used to manage a symbolic link called "d-compiler"(?) to 
point to either dmd, gdc or anything else.

I don't think that some random apt repo on google code is a proper 
alternative to having D libraries in official Debian. I wouldn't like to add 
the gpg key of a random site to my apt keyring.

I'm a Debian Maintainer, still unexperienced with C/C++/D library stuff but 
maybe I could help a bit.

Best regards, Thomas Koch