Make CppInterOp available through multiple package managers

[mcbarton]

Description of new feature

Currently CppInterOp is only available through the conda package manager. To increase the number of people making use of CppInterOp it should be made available through multiple package managers for a variety of systems. I'm aware that doing this is a lot of work, but I think its worth the effort. Examples package managers include

For osx

• MacPorts (my package manager of choice on osx)
• Homebrew (very popular for osx due to not requiring admin rights like conda)

Linux

• apt/apt-get (the default package managers for Ubuntu)
• dnf (I believe the default for Fedora)

Windows

• Chocolatey (the package manager used by Github on Windows)

HPC systems regularly make use of these 2

• Spack
• Easybuild

I plan to slowly make my way through the list above over the course of the year.

[ShalokShalom]

Why not vcpkg, conan and xmake?

Seems to be low hanging fruits.

Also, there is a detail worth pointing out.

You want packages, and not support for package managers, to be precise.

You use a package manager to make a package, and multiple distro's can use the same package manager to produce totally different packages.

Specifically, you an create a RPM that is compatible with OpenSUSE, Fedora, and maybe even Mageia and PCLinuxOS (almost) unaltered, despite all of them using different package managers.

Since they all use the RPM package format.

I dont know about the specifics, but I definitely read before about Fedora and OpenSUSE sharing some packages, or needing very little changes before.

That is something to be researched before starting out.

I can look into creating a package for Arch, and also suggest looking into Nix.

Once packaged in Nix, it can be made available in every Linux distro, and macOS.

Additionally, Nix offers environments for development, which can be reproduced on other systems, etc.

If you want a streamlined development process for both users of CppInterOp and you devs itself, its worth to consider it as an official way to install the software.

[vgvassilev]

The problem is generally keeping the various package managers up-to-date because there is always something that needs to change due to the package managers themselves. If somebody steps up I'd be happy to support as many as the person likes ;)

[ShalokShalom]

You dont update the package managers, you do update the packages. 😃

And you update them only if the project itself changes.

Package managers break very rarely backwards compatibility.

[vgvassilev]

You dont update the package managers, you do update the packages. 😃

That's what I meant.

And you update them only if the project itself changes.

Yes, it's package description which is quite a subtle topic.

Package managers break very rarely backwards compatibility.

Our experience with conda does not share that view. Part of the reasons is that CppInterOp is a strange beast -- it repackages llvm as a single shared library that is allowed to jit compile codes. That is on the border between low-level libraries and the operating system. Changes of any break things quite often for no good reason...

As a team I do not think it is wise to invest into supporting more package managers than a super small useful subset (still not clear to me what that is). If the community steps up and helps we are always here to help.

[ShalokShalom]

What about the C++ ones? I personally use Xmake, but I know Condan is the most popular one.