getting fixed version of mit-scheme into universe

[Chris Hanson]

Hi,

I'm the maintainer of the Debian mit-scheme packages, as well as the
upstream author.  I've noticed that these packages haven't been updated
in universe for a long time, apparently because they can't be built from
source.  There's a reason for this, which is that a sufficiently new
version of MIT/GNU Scheme must be installed in order to build from
source.  (The majority of the source is written in Scheme and must be
compiled by the Scheme compiler to build a binary, so there's a
bootstrap issue to contend with.)  Periodically, the changes between
releases mean that there is no released package "sufficiently new" to
compile the sources.

This isn't a problem for upstream, because we always release both
sources and binaries.  And it's not a problem for Debian, because I
always use a non-packaged upstream binary to build the binary packages
that I upload.  But it does appear to be a problem for Ubuntu, because
automated building doesn't work in these cases, and no one is uploading
manually-built binaries.

So, what can be done to resolve this issue?  I'd like there to be
up-to-date binaries in Ubuntu.  I build such binary packages as part of
the upstream release, and distribute them from the MIT/GNU Scheme home
page.  Is there some way that I can get hand-built binaries uploaded to
the archive?

Launchpad considers me to be the "maintainer" for these packages (as
well as all the others I maintain for Debian), but it's not obvious to
me what that means, and whether there are any associated privileges
and/or responsibilities.  I'm pretty sure it doesn't allow me to upload
packages to the archives, though.

I understand that Edgy is currently in freeze, and I'm not suggesting
that this be done now.  I'm hoping to figure this out so that the
archives can be updated after the release.

Thanks for any help you can offer.  And please include me in any reply
as I don't read this list.

Chris