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I'm not as active as I used to be on places like the Ubuntu forums and Launchpad, so I'm not sure where the best place to direct a feature request is.

Currently Ubuntu 20.10 ships with freeglut 2.8, which dates all the way back to 2013. Current version is 3.2. Oddly enough, freeglut 2.8 is listed as freeglut3 in the repositories, even though it's still technically freeglut2.

Reason for the query: the version of Asymptote (2.67) that ships with Ubuntu 20.10 (via TeXLive 2020) throws a segfault whenever you try to compile a 3D image to PDF. In particular: take any Asymptote example that loads the three library and run asy -f pdf -noprc example.asy.

You'll get output, but you also get a segmentation fault. (I learned after plenty of correspondence with one of the Asymptote devs that it's actually a floating point exception, but in any case...) If you install the latest freeglut3 from source, using the instructions provided on the Asymptote website, everything works fine.

I'm not really sure why freeglut has been held back to a version that's 7 years old.

Sean Fitzpatrick
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    I suggest reporting it as a bug to Launchpad. We can't answer why the package is still old in the repos. – Pilot6 Nov 23 '20 at 19:38
  • Their page says, "The freeglut project does not support packaged versions of freeglut excepting, of course, the tarballs distributed here." Which possibly explains why it's so old. They expect the community to do so, if they want. Canonical has limited manpower, and my best guess is that the two are related. But, as Pilot6 said, this isn't really the right place for this discussion. – KGIII Nov 23 '20 at 20:37
  • The current Debian bug report for packaging 3.x: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=859687. There are unresolved build failures. – user535733 Nov 23 '20 at 21:20

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Let's take a look at the Debian Package Tracker to see the packaging activity. Like most packages, Ubuntu gets freeglut from Debian:

enter image description here

There are a few facts we can parse from this page:

  1. Debian is aware of the new upstream versions.
  2. There is a workflow backlog (lintian warnings, build log warning, standards warning).
  3. A single volunteer has been uploading this package for at least seven years.

#2 and #3 imply that the lone volunteer is perhaps overworked and might welcome a bit of help from another volunteer (like you). There seems to be no intent to deliberately hold back the package.

The software catalogs of Debian and Ubuntu are curated by community volunteers (like you). New volunteers to share the work are ALWAYS welcome. You don't need to be a professional developer -- a willingness to learn is more important than your current skills. Start your journey with two actions: Start the training at http://mentors.debian.net, and reach our to the current maintainer with your offer to learn how to help.

user535733
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  • Thanks! This is what I was looking for: it goes past Launchpad and upstream to Debian. – Sean Fitzpatrick Nov 23 '20 at 22:56
  • John Bowman (who maintains Asymptote) pointed out to me that the build instructions for freeglut are flawed: there's a cmake command that you need to run first, as documented on the Asymptote website. Maybe that's the issue. I'll check over on the Debian bug tracker – Sean Fitzpatrick Nov 23 '20 at 23:00