3.14 Debian packages?

Questions
1

Hi list,

I am wondering if SC 3.14 will eventually become available to Debian
users? Are the package authors on this list by chance? Who would I get
in contact with otherwise?

Thanks!
Peter

2

Hey Peter,

I don’t know the debian maintainers and we have little to no contact with them.

supercollider - Debian Package Tracker is their development tracker, which recently published https://tracker.debian.org/news/1755263/supercollider-13141repack2-1-migrated-to-testing/ - so next debian stable release will use 3.14.1 (IIUC) - also next ubuntu release seems to take this over, see supercollider package : Ubuntu.

IIUC debian correctly, once a version has been picked for release, they will not upgrade it within a debian version, only backport fixes.

3

Good to know, and thanks for pointing me to the package tracker Dennis!

It’s good to know that IOhannes is involved (I CC him in this message)
and is possibly the package manager for SC on Debian then(?).

IOhannes, is it true that 3.14.1 will become availabe once Trixie is
declared stable, and is there an even quicker way, eg. via debian-backports?

best, Peter

4

i have received a very interesting reply from IOhannes, who is not on this mailing list. I am including it below (and can relay any upcoming replies to him again).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

On 17/07/2026 15:20, Peter P. wrote:

Good to know, and thanks for pointing me to the package tracker Dennis!

It’s good to know that IOhannes is involved (I CC him in this message)
and is possibly the package manager for SC on Debian then(?).

since I care about the CM ecosystem in general, I did the last few uploads if
SC-3.14 to Debian.
however, i’m afraid i don’t feel the same responsibility for the SC3 packages
as i feel for, say, the Pd packages.

IOhannes, is it true that 3.14.1 will become availabe once Trixie is
declared stable,

Trixie is already Debian/stable (Debian 13 “trixie” was released 2025-08-09)
the next Debian release (14) will be called “forkie”.

if forky were released today, it would contain SC-3.14.1
however, it will take a while until forky will eventually be released.
so the actual version of SC3 that will be shipped with forky, might be
something newer (see below).

and is there an even quicker way, eg. via debian-backports?

providing packages via Debian/backports requires a bit of commitment, as you
have to take care of the package for the entire life-cycle of the Debian next
release.
because of this, I have decided for myself to really only do backports for
packages that I primarily care about (and this is only a small handful of
packages; and i’m afraid SC is currently not in this set).
however, that shouldn’t keep any other Debian Maintainer from stepping in and
uploading SuperCollider to Debian/backports.

I don’t know the debian maintainers and we have little to no contact with them.

Debian Maintainer are always understaffed, so if somebody from the community
wants to collaborate with packageing SC for Debian, I think they will be very
welcome.

IIUC debian correctly, once a version has been picked for release, they will not upgrade it within a debian version, only backport fixes.

the second part of this sentence is correct, but the first part may be a bit
misleading.
Debian development happens in the “unstable” branch. there you will typically
see versions that are more or less in synch with upstream development. once a
new package has been uploaded to Debian/unstable, it will typically be copied
to Debian/testing within a week. Debian/testing is the tentative next release
of Debian.
every once in a while (typically about every 2 years), Debian/testing is
frozen and (after a period of extended bug fixing in the packaging) is
released as Debian/stable.
Once a package is in a Debian/stable release it will typically not change for
that release cycle, with the exception of severe bugfixes and security fixes.
however, Debian/unstable (and Debian/testing) will track upstream development.
so we haven’t “picked” SC-3.14.1 for the next Debian release yet.

gfmds
IOhannes

5

Could people use the new flat packs to get around this easily?

6

Thanks so much Peter, much appreciated!

Yes, this is indeed the case and this topic came up again b/c of Flatpak builds for SuperCollider

Though flatpak is statically linked where debian packages are dynamically linked - I think the latter is preferable IMO, but comes with more maintenance.

It primarily allows to distribute SuperCollider across distros in a similar manner and is closer in the application development loop than the distro maintainer loop.

1 Like
7

Could people use the new flat packs to get around this easily?

Flatpacks have several disadvantages (size, security, memory footprint,
…) over distribution packages with their dynamically linked and
individually upgradable libraries. I will not repeat the pro’s and cons
of flatpack here, there is a plethora of webpages about it. One of them
nicely sums it up as “Flatpak - the right way to do a wrong thing.” :slight_smile:

There are SC3 packages out there for the major distributions already,
which are tried and tested and in the queue to become available in
Debian testing in a year from now (or earlier if someone volunteers
to package them for backports). My motivation to post here is to
show that there are end users who rely on these packages and who’d
rather use 3.13 for another year or compile from the sources than
install a flatpack, despite Dennis’ amazing and useful work in compiling
them.