Proposal: Improving the LLVM backend by packaging it

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,


Am Samstag, den 01.11.2014, 11:43 -0400 schrieb Ben Gamari:
> I'm certainly not opposed to this idea and there is precedent in this
> area set by the Rust folks. That being said, I suspect some
> distributions may care pretty deeply about being able to compile against
> their own LLVM packaging, especially if they are already shipping the
> same LLVM version as we require. It would be really nice to hear your
> thoughts on this, Joachim.

it would be nice if we would not have to do this, but if LLVM does not
provide a stable enough interface I see the technical need for it.

I asked the stakeholders in Debian for optinions¹ but only got one reply
from the LLVM maintainer, saying:

> Obviously, I don't really like code duplication on a project like LLVM.
> Especially since it seems like a fork.
> 
> If upstream goes this way (and I agree that it is going to be hard for the Debian
> maintainer of ghc to go against that), it is going to be hard for the maintainer,
> especially if there is no plan to sync LLVM from time to time (if they do,
> well, you should be quite fine, LLVM is not super hard to maintain and we
> can always exchange info).
> 
> However, I think upstream (ghc) should try to work more closely with LLVM and find a better
> way to collaborate. Having patches applied in LLVM itself is simple and usually
> fast.
> 
> BTW, there are discussion on LLVM mailing list on this topic.
> 
> So, I am not going to give a green or red light. I don't think this is going
> to affect my work... Mostly, it is going to affect yours.


So the Debian packaging will just follow whatever upstream does here.

Greetings,
Joachim

¹ https://lists.debian.org/debian-haskell/2014/10/msg00017.html



-- 
Joachim Breitner
  e-Mail: mail at joachim-breitner.de
  Homepage: http://www.joachim-breitner.de
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