Hello all,

As announced at DConf 2017, snap packages are now available for DMD 2.074.0 and DUB 1.3.0 in the official snap store.  These should allow for installation on multiple different Linux distros (see below) on i386 and amd64 systems.

Installing them is simple: first follow the `snapd` installation instructions here:
https://snapcraft.io/docs/core/install

... and then:

    sudo snap install --classic --channel=edge dmd
    sudo snap install --classic --channel=edge dub

where the `--classic` flag grants permission for the confinement options required by the packages.

The `dmd` package also contains `rdmd`, `dustmite` and `ddemangle`.  Note that by default the snap package exposes these namespaced on the name of the package (i.e. `dmd.rdmd`, etc.).  To avoid this, use the `snap alias` command:

    sudo snap alias dmd rdmd
    sudo snap alias dmd dustmite
    sudo snap alias dmd ddemangle

... and then it should be possible to use the regular commands.

Currently these packages are only released in the `edge` channel (out of `edge`, `beta`, `candidate` and `stable`).  It would be good to have as many people (on as many different supported distros) try them out in order to get confirmation that they are working properly.  Currently they are expected to work on at least:

  * Ubuntu 14.04, and 16.04 or later

  * Debian Testing and Unstable

  * OpenSUSE Leap

In principle they ought to work on any system with a recent enough `snapd` (2.21 or later), but the above are the ones I have tried them on.

On systems with snapd 2.24 (the latest release) it looks like there is an issue with rdmd: the sandboxing interferes with rdmd writing to the `/tmp` directory.  It's not clear at this point if this is an issue with snapd or with rdmd itself, but I'm looking into it.

Special thanks to Martin Nowak who took time with me at DConf to help in setting up the snap store account for these packages.

Enjoy, and let me know how you all get on with these packages!

For more info on snap packages and how to use (and create) them, see:
https://snapcraft.io

Thanks & best wishes,

    -- Joe

On Monday, 8 May 2017 at 20:05:01 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> Hello all,

[...]

> Enjoy, and let me know how you all get on with these packages!
>
> For more info on snap packages and how to use (and create) them, see:
> https://snapcraft.io
>
> Thanks & best wishes,
>
>     -- Joe

Thanks for making these available. I needed to install ldc today, so I used the snap package. Installation was trivial (Ubuntu 16.04).

On Monday, 8 May 2017 at 20:23:36 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> Thanks for making these available. I needed to install ldc today, so I used the snap package. Installation was trivial (Ubuntu 16.04).

That's great to hear.  Note that it's also trivial to swap between the current stable release and the latest beta, if you want to try things out:

    sudo snap refresh --channel=1.3/beta   [to switch to the 1.3.0-beta1 release]
    sudo snap refresh --channel=stable     [to switch back to the latest stable release]

On Monday, 8 May 2017 at 20:05:01 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> As announced at DConf 2017, snap packages are now available for DMD 2.074.0 and DUB 1.3.0 in the official snap store.  These should allow for installation on multiple different Linux distros (see below) on i386 and amd64 systems.

Hello, I have tried those snaps recently on Ubuntu 16.10. There were -fPIC related errors (if you need the output, I can install the snap again and post it tomarrow).

On Thursday, 11 May 2017 at 11:47:10 UTC, Piotr Mitana wrote:
> Hello, I have tried those snaps recently on Ubuntu 16.10. There were -fPIC related errors (if you need the output, I can install the snap again and post it tomarrow).

Ouch!  Thanks for reporting this: it sounds like something similar to what Attila was reporting for his attempts at building on Arch.

I'll look into it and see if I can fix packaging side (it's probably possible by tweaking CFLAGS), before submitting fixes upstream if it's something that can reasonably be addressed there.

On Thursday, 11 May 2017 at 14:46:10 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On Thursday, 11 May 2017 at 11:47:10 UTC, Piotr Mitana wrote:
>> Hello, I have tried those snaps recently on Ubuntu 16.10. There were -fPIC related errors (if you need the output, I can install the snap again and post it tomarrow).

OK, looks like `-fPIC` was missing from some of the druntime and phobos build commands.  I've pushed a patch to the `dmd` package definition that should fix this.

Can I confirm whether you had these problems with `dmd` only or also with the `dub` package?

On Thursday, 11 May 2017 at 22:30:52 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> OK, looks like `-fPIC` was missing from some of the druntime and phobos build commands.  I've pushed a patch to the `dmd` package definition that should fix this.

Hmm, no dice.  I'll look into this further in the next days.

On Thursday, 11 May 2017 at 22:52:54 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On Thursday, 11 May 2017 at 22:30:52 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
>> OK, looks like `-fPIC` was missing from some of the druntime and phobos build commands.  I've pushed a patch to the `dmd` package definition that should fix this.
>
> Hmm, no dice.  I'll look into this further in the next days.

This should fix it: https://github.com/dlang-snaps/dmd.snap/pull/7

It seems that you added PIC on the tools repo, instead of druntime.
I missed that too when debugging the snapcraft build myself. Looking
at the diff without expanding it on github (https://github.com/dlang-snaps/dmd.snap/commit/b82fb60cb33e6ed42534e36f8703f75702f2c9fb) can
be quite confusing. I came back to that file only after reading
the druntime, phobos and tools makefiles several times and
scratching my head for about an hour :D

On Monday, 15 May 2017 at 21:07:05 UTC, Petar Kirov [ZombineDev] wrote:
> This should fix it: https://github.com/dlang-snaps/dmd.snap/pull/7

Thanks ever so much for that.  It's really nice to have the first not-by-me patch in that repo, especially when it comes with such a nicely-written commit message :-)

> It seems that you added PIC on the tools repo, instead of druntime.
> I missed that too when debugging the snapcraft build myself. Looking
> at the diff without expanding it on github (https://github.com/dlang-snaps/dmd.snap/commit/b82fb60cb33e6ed42534e36f8703f75702f2c9fb) can
> be quite confusing. I came back to that file only after reading
> the druntime, phobos and tools makefiles several times and
> scratching my head for about an hour :D

D'oh!  Thanks again for taking that time.  I think I'm going to hold some of the shorter-term effects of DConf responsible for the misplaced PICs ... :-P

With your patch in the repo, the packages should be automatically rebuilt and uploaded some time in the next hours.  I'll follow up with an announcement here once that has happened.

On Tuesday, 16 May 2017 at 19:56:56 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> With your patch in the repo, the packages should be automatically rebuilt and uploaded some time in the next hours.
>  I'll follow up with an announcement here once that has happened.

Patches with Petar's PIC fix in them have now been uploaded to the store.  I've tested on Ubuntu 16.10 and 17.04 and they seem to work well.