[pygame] State of the Debian

["Pete Shinners" <shredwheat@mediaone.net>]

hey guys, there's been a little discussion on what's up with
installing on debian. i think we've figured out all the 'problems', 
but really aren't sure about getting any solutions. :[

here's 3 things that are preventing an "apt-get install pygame"
from running smoothly.

1. No SDL_ttf support. SDL_ttf only supports the older freetype-1.x
libraries. Debian (and soon the rest of creation) has moved on to
the freetype2 libraries. getting freetype1 installed to co-exist
with freetype2 on debian is a huge pain, therefore there's no 
easy way to get SDL_ttf working either. This means to font module
in pygame, which will severely limit what people can do.

2. No Numeric python support. There is no debian package for the
Numeric library. This really shouldn't be hard to do, since Numeric
is nice and mature at this point, it just needs someone to adopt
it and put it into a DEB. Without Numeric we get no surfarray module,
which people are also missing. Fortunately, it is easy to compile
and install Numeric, and to also compile and install pygame from
source.

3. No official debian maintainer. Currently, Francis has done a great
job managing the different pygame debian issues. The "unstable branch"
is a pretty shifty place, and new dependencies are frequently released
that break other packages, which forces them to update. i don't know
how the whole process is supposed to work, but it seems pretty chaotic.
Also, there's no way for pygame to get moved into the official debian
archive without a real maintainer.

So that's where it sits. Talking to some of the debian maintainers,
it is still going to be a long time before Python2 and SDL-1.2 are
moved from unstable into testing. Once that happens, i think life
will be somewhat easier all around.

so we're still missing two (3 if you count freetype1) important
debian packages before we can have an easy to install/full featured
pygame package.

i was thinking the best solution is to start our own 3rd party
debian module repository. In it we could include SDL_ttf (with
statically linked freetype libraries), Numeric, and a pygame.
(perhaps include all the dependency modules (SDL_image,etc) that
are currently in the debian unstable, that way we won't be so tied
into updated all our packages when one in unstable gets changed)

all we really need is a properly setup FTP directory, and people
can add it into their debian archive list. then the
"apt-get install pygame" can be a simple reality. This will need
a volunteer to get done, since i'm pretty booked as is. :]

i was hoping Francis and/or David (pretty please?) could take a
look into this. i know there's tons of 3rd party debian repositories
out there, and at this time, perhaps being in charge of our own fate
isn't such a bad idea?  (i can provide the ftp/http space ;])


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