Re: New re-flex library package?

Hi Andreas,

Thank you very much for working on this -- sorry for the delay in response!

Yeah, we probably don't want to change the installed binary (reflex) and 
library names (libreflex) if we don't have to.  There is also a library 
called libreflexmin.... but I see that CMakeLists.txt doesn't support it.

For the package name, I think we should use re-flex, that seems to be 
the package name used in: homebrew, macports, nixpkgs, freebsd pkg, and 
opensuse.  I think this would be the name for (i) the source package and 
(ii) the package that contains the binary 'reflex'.

I may try to improve the cmake script in the downstream repo, because it 
lacks some distinctions that the author's simple `build.sh` has.  But 
those distinctions are not super-important for my use case.

-BenRI

P.S Resending, because I accidentally left off the debian-med list the 
first time.

On 7/22/26 7:46 AM, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Hi Benjamin,
>
> Am Mon, Jul 20, 2026 at 12:03:38AM -0400 schrieb Benjamin Redelings:
>> Would anyone anyone would be able to package the re-flex lexer generator?
>> It provides a mostly drop-in replacement for the venerable `flex` software,
>> plus extensions for unicode handling and other things:
>>
>>      https://github.com/Genivia/RE-flex
> Thank you for the hint - I've started with the packaging at
>
>     https://salsa.debian.org/med-team/re-flex
>   
>> I'm asking because version 4.3 of my bali-phy software is going to link
>> against libreflex.  bali-phy is packaged in Debian -- thanks so much to the
>> debian-med team! -- but re-flex does not have a Debian package.
>> Interestingly, it seems like the ugrep package contains a vendored copy
>> of re-flex, so there are now at least two packages that depend on re-flex.
>> I've Cc-ed Ricardo, who is the maintainer for ugrep.
>>
>> The re-flex author seems relatively responsive, so I think he would be
>> relatively easy to work with, if needed.  I have submitted some PRs to
>> re-flex, and they seem to get a reply within a week.  If there are some
>> issues that come up, I'm happy to help out.
> I'm unsure about the names.  The binary is called 'reflex' (without
> the dash) and the library packages should probably also be named like
> the library (also without the dash) libreflex? (need to check SOVERSION)
> and libreflex-dev.  Unfortunately the (source) package name 'reflex'
> is taken in Debian and we might consider reflex-tools for the binary
> package and leave the source package re-flex.  What do you think?
>
> Kind regards
>      Andreas.
>