[bug#36289] [PATCH] Add symmetrica

[Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr>]

Hello,

On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 12:08:10PM +0200, Nicolas Goaziou wrote:
> - I added the package in "sagemath.scm" because its main use would be
>   with Sage, and it is already heavily patched by Sage. Should I move it
>   to "algebra.scm" or "maths.scm"?

thanks a lot for the patch!

So far, I have added packages in sagemath.scm when the upstream maintenance
had been taken over by the Sage group; or when there was an older version
or a beta version that was required by Sage (for instance linbox, with the
main version in algebra.scm and a previous release in sagemath.scm).

In the case of symmetrica, it looks like an independent project, so I would
put it in algebra.scm.

> - The package creates a static library, because that is what Sage seems
>   to expect (see <https://git.sagemath.org/sage.git/plain/build/pkgs/symmetrica/patches/makefile>).

More details can be found in build/pkgs/symmetrica/spkg-install; and
metadata in build/pkgs/symmetrica/SPKG.txt (only the second webpage they
give is working). Indeed, it appears that a static library is installed,
and that...

> - I'm not sure about the installation. Headers go into
>   "%out/include/symmetrica" and static library into "%out/lib". Is that
>   right?

... these are the correct directories.

Concerning the patches, I have been conservative so far: As long as the
package compiled, I did not apply any of the patches (mainly out of
laziness...). My first goal is to *compile* sage; then we will have to see
whether we can start it and whether it passes its tests.

For your information, I moved to the latest release sage-8.7 and to python-3;
I have been told that sage can be built with python-3, and that it "mainly
works".

Andreas