Considering to package YaCy for Debian

YaCy
1

I consider to package YaCy for the official Debian archive so that users can install YaCy without even adding a third-party archive as was the case with the now defunct YaCy provided deb packages.

I’m still early in my evaluation of YaCy but please be so kind to help me with some answers already:

  • Is there actually interest in the first place from the YaCy project in having YaCy packaged for the Debian archive?
  • From this forum and other places I get the impression that YaCy is mainly developed and maintained by one person. It is somewhat old but still active software and there is no plan to deprecate it any time soon. There is a related project YaCy grid but this is not intended as a replacement to YaCy. Is this correct?
  • I’ll need to pick some commit or tarball to package and give it a version number. Could the project commit on a versioning scheme and provide updates in this versioning scheme on a regular basis, e.g. every half a year?
  • I might discover hurdles with YaCy in relation to Debian packaging guidelines and provide patches to solve these. Is there capacity to review a few hopefully small patches and merge them?
  • When I learn a new code base I like to write down my learnings as README files in the code itself. Would you merge such code documentation?

I’ve experience in Java, Search, Web development, kubernetes, distributed systems and linux administration. I’d be happy to talk about areas where I could contribute to the project once I’ve familiarized myself more.

Next I want to set up a dedicated machine that I’ve laying around with 1 TB of hard discs to take YaCy for a more serious test drive.

3 Likes
2

Hi welcome thk,

we had a debian release but I dropped it last year mostly because of missing community support but also because I believe that doing system-specific releases is today a bad approach unless you are willing to spend huge amount of time to manage that:

However, if you want to create a debian package, you are welcome to do so!
I also will link it in the download section of yacy.net, so please do so if you like!

3

I am interested in a Debian repository package for YaCy! I am currently running an instance on Debian Bullseye and would be glad to test things if needed.

4

Hi, @thk,
did you go for it?
I believe any package, which has active maintainer, is worth of effort.

There are versioned releases. I think that a lot of people would appreciate version tagging on github, bringing some order into releases, but that depends on @orbiter.

With the most pleasure! There is a separate docs repository. The upkeep of the official one is quite slow, but I maintain standalone version, and appreciate any additions or corrections.

5

I’ve not packaged YaCy for Debian for a few reasons:

  1. I’ve been excluded from the Debian project.
  2. Coincidentally I’m trying to move to NixOS.
  3. I’m working on my own experiments around decentralized search.

And I had much less time the last 2 years than I expected.

Most importantly, it is not easy to package YaCy for the Debian:org archive instead of “just” building a .deb package:

  • YaCy required Java 8, Debian ships with Java 17. Now YaCy requires Java 11. Maybe it could also work with Java 17 today.
  • Debian requires all dependencies of a package to also be included as standalone packages in Debian.

I did a first step by introducing ivy.xml in YaCy and thus allowing dependencies of YaCy to be declared in a standardized way. However there were a few libs back than that were not available through ivy.

If somebody wants to give it a try again, I’m happy to mentor.

1 Like
6

I consider doing another attempt to Debian packaging. Does anything from the previous attempts done by the project and from @thk still exist?

I might decide do do a package below Debian quality if the effort is too high. The package(s) will in this case also be available for the public,

1 Like
7

Great! Looking forward!