Debian support via static executable or deb package

[eliliam]

There are many users out there who use Debian for both their personal environments as well as in production, I being one of them. While there is a PPA for Ubuntu, this does not seem to work with Debian. I have tried the generic Linux version from the releases page, but am met with errors regarding GLIBC version mismatches. I have experienced this on Debian 11 and the only way that I can seem to get it to work is via building from source. However, building from source is not ideal, especially for smaller environments with minimal compute power and disk space, especially when the rust toolchain is also not available.

My suggestion would be to statically link the executable so that it can run on these systems, or to provide an official deb package that can be used on both Debian as well as Ubuntu.

[the-mikedavis]

We don't like to maintain many 'official' packages since there are so many package managers and formats and supporting many is a burden. Also I don't think any of the maintainers use debian frequently or package for it. Like the other packages though, it would be great if someone familiar with debian packaging could package Helix

[bitbegin]

#6528

[yunfan]

@the-mikedavis then what about the other suggestion on providing static linked executable? it looks like could reduce much the work for providing different linux distrio

[tgross35]

I think it is possible for this to be accepted into Debian repos, which should work for both Debian and Ubuntu without a ppa. I think that typically once you produce a .deb package, you just need a sponsor who can help get it entered into the bugtracker.

Links to some packages that have recently done the same:

• bat: Request: Provide a PPA for Debian/Ubuntu sharkdp/bat#323 (comment)
• delta: Make Delta an official Debian package dandavison/delta#26

[tgross35]

A better tutorial here: https://salsa.debian.org/rust-team/debcargo-conf/blob/master/README.rst / https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/RustPackaging

[pascalkuthe]

yeah, that would be the ideal, but it requires somebody to volunteer to put the effort into this. As @the-mikedavis mentioned, we don't maintain the distro packages ourselves so somebody else needs to step up to do that (just like for any other distro)

[tgross35]

Of course; it would require both somebody to do the changes in this repo and a sponsor on the debian side. I'm just trying to collect some context in case anyone wants to have a go at it :)

[pascalkuthe]

do the changes in this repo

I meant that we don't usually accept packaging files in this repo. Ideally, packaging should happen without our involvement (same as for other distros)

[tgross35]

Ah; I did not realize that was the case. Do you know off the top of your head who maintains the PPA? (I can figure it out if not). I wonder if the PPA's packaging would be accepted into debian stable with a sponsor.

[pascalkuthe]

No, I don't know that I am afraid, I think the PPA also had some issues (or was being abandoned?) but I might be mixing that up it's hard to keep track of all the distro packages. I am also pretty sure that the PPA downloads the official release from github instead of building from source which is a no go for an official package so you would need to start from scratch most likely.

[tgross35]

Looks like the context is here #3640 and the packaging is at https://github.com/maveonair/helix-ppa. It seems like the rustc version available is prohibitive, but I thought there may be ways to get around that.

@sylvestre I think you maintain Rust packaging for Debian - is there any way Helix could make it into the Debian repos if the MSRV is greater than bookworm's rustc?

[pascalkuthe]

rustc on debain unstable is new enough( (rustc 1.66) for helix 23.5 and likely the next release too. New packages usually don't get introduced to stable retroactively anyway afaik

[maveonair]

No, I don't know that I am afraid, I think the PPA also had some issues (or was being abandoned?) but I might be mixing that up it's hard to keep track of all the distro packages. I am also pretty sure that the PPA downloads the official release from github instead of building from source which is a no go for an official package so you would need to start from scratch most likely.

No, it's not abandoned, but I had some problems with the build process that were solved thanks to the support of the Helix community. So the PPA is fine, but Debian 12 ships an earlier version of Rustc that cannot be used at the moment to build Helix under Debian 12.

There might be a way to ship a newer version of Rustc via the Debian Backports, but I'm not sure if this is the preferred way.

[pascalkuthe]

Good to hear the Ubuntu PPA si still maintained.

I think getting into Debian unstable would be a good start (and like I said the rustc version is actually new enough). When the next Debian release comes around helix would then be included there

[FedericoCeratto]

The progress at building an official Debian package is being tracked at https://bugs.debian.org/1024683

[tgross35]

FYI for anyone looking to help - the main task is getting a version of all dependencies into debcargo. A pretty recent list of the missing packages is here https://salsa.debian.org/debian/hx/-/blob/debian/latest/debian/TODO, mostly various gix-* crates