BaseX distribution in Debian

[dirkk]

Description of the Problem

Hello my dear friends from the other side of the lake!

Given that I have a new company laptop with a shiny Ubuntu I obviously needed BaseX to solve all my problems™. So I looked for the easiest way to install and BaseX is even in the official repos (couldn't remember that)! Great. Unfortunately, I noticed currently only version 9.0.1 is release there, which I guess is quite outdated when the latest version is 10.6.

It would be nice if a more recent version would be available

Also, one side not which has nothing to do with the ticket: Maybe you want to change how tickets can be reported. I am aware I should have submitted this to the mailing list. But to be honest, subscribing to the list and then getting all these mails where I am not really interested, seemed cumbersome: I think it would be a good idea to also allow/encourage bug reports or questions to be submitted in GitHub, as it is just a platform where developers already are.

Expected Behavior

Expect to get the latest features

Steps to Reproduce the Behavior

Run sudo apt-get install basex on Ubuntu or any other Debian.

Do you have an idea how to solve the issue?

Make Alex upload to the Debian repository, I guess :)

What is your configuration?

Ubuntu

[holu]

Hi @dirkk, I'm pleased to read from you and best wishes in return :-)

As chance would have it, just three days ago I installed Ubuntu as well. Now I have an intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to update the BaseX Debian/Ubuntu package.

Current situation

The current debian packaging is available in Debian's gitlab infrastructure and @tmancill is our Debian mentor. This is all very nice and fine.

The package itself, however, has some minor deficiencies and a major one: It is lacking basexhttp. So what we currently get with the deb is less than the zip distribution.

Goal

Have a basex package that

• provides the same functionality as the zip distribution
• can be installed, updated, removed with default tools on Debian/Ubuntu
• respects the guidelines (file hierarchy etc.) of Debian/Ubuntu

Steps to a new basex package on Debian

I plan to file some issues on Debian's gitlab about future packaging of BaseX to address the minor deficiencies:

• Move configuration to /etc
• Move logs to /var, /usr/var
• Add configuration and log inspection to man page
• Reduce warnings on startup regarding recommended packages
• Add saxon-he to package recommendations

But the main issue is the missing basexhttp:

• Have a look a jetty and its availability in debian as separate library. This would be key for packaging basexhttp
• (Maybe) switch to a multi-package:
  • basexhttp with jetty
  • basex, basexserver, basexclient with java-headless
  • basexgui w/o java-headless

An alternative (maybe a shortcut?) might be using snap.

I'm just thinking-aloud. Feedback, thoughts are welcome. Thanks for pushing me forward.

[ChristianGruen]

BaseX 10.5 is now available for Debian: https://packages.debian.org/de/sid/basex