[Chicken-hackers] .egg -> .deb packaging issues

[Ivan Shmakov]

        I'm still interested in packaging pre-built binary extensions
        for Chicken with `dpkg'.  There're a few issues still
        unresolved, IIRC:

        * Debian packages for other languages' extensions usually follow
          libEXTENSION-LANGUAGE convention (e. g., libocamlnet-ocaml);
          could this convention be adopted for Chicken's extensions?

        * currently, Chicken seems to search for extensions in, roughly,
          $CHICKEN_REPOSITORY and $CHICKEN_HOME; it's not enough, since
          there's to be a distribution-wide repository of pre-compiled
          packages (/usr/lib/chicken/<binary-version>), a system-local
          one (/usr/local/...) and a user's own one (e. g.,
          ~/lib/chicken/<binary-version>); a facility for selecting any
          number of directories to search for the packages needs to be
          added (perhaps, a CHICKEN_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable);

        * on the other hand, `chicken-setup' needs exactly one directory
          to install the packages into; thus, CHICKEN_REPOSITORY
          variable is to be preserved in its current meaning; BTW, as a
          convenience, a default repository for `chicken-setup' could be
          changed to point to a directory below $HOME; thus,
          `chicken-setup' will behave sensibly even for non-privileged
          accounts on system-wide Chicken installations;

        * there's to be a tool which analyzes the source and shows the
          discrepancies between it and the `debian/control' file
          (Depends: and Build-Depends: fields are to be watched
          carefully, in particular.)

        I believe that the ``library path'' issues aren't specific to
        Debian packaging and deserve some careful thought irrespective
        to which system or distribution one's using.

        With an APT-repository of Debian packages available, deploying a
        feature-rich version of Chicken-based Scheme programming
        environment could be made lightning-fast.  I believe this will
        make Chicken a viable alternative to other languages (such as
        Perl or Python), at least in Debian-based GNU systems.