Hi Andrius, Thanks for replying. See below :- On Sat, Oct 30, 2021 at 10:33:02AM +0300, Andrius Merkys wrote: > Hi, > > On 2021-10-29 20:31, Torrance, Douglas wrote: > > During the Debian Science BoF at this year's DebConf, there was some > > discussion of creating a team devoted to packaging mathematical software. > > I agree with Anton here. I do not see how further fragmentation of > debian-science could benefit it. I missed the BoF, but maybe there are > notes reflecting this decision? No notes, Andreas came up with this idea in debconf, you could find it on videos.debian.net. But anyways, I have the following point to make: 1. Separate team will help keep track of math-specific software, making it easy for interested folks to work on them. Currently there is no specific team, and packages are scattered across several teams which is (in my eyes) a bit haphazard 2. debian-math meta-package (with a separate team) -- this will help researchers to get math related software and tooling in one go (exactly like the debian-med metapackage) 3. Easier to find and contribute for people -- I am sure there are a lot of people on this list, and even DDs who are interested in math, having such a team helps them approach and contribute well. 4. Better maintainance - Lots of math softwares which are still lying un-updated, or broken in some ways. So it helps improve the overall quality 5. We have debichem team for chemistry packages, astro team for astronomy ones, and now even a new robotics team We had a new AI team made a few months back. These would also come under science earlier, so if we could make teams for specific domains, *and* they are doing well, why not do so for math? I mean this comes as a very natural choice to me, considering other blends. > Separate team and separate mailing list will have less members than > debian-science. Well, every other team has started exactly the same way in Debian (i.e. less members) -- it would grow with time, I don't think it'll be stalled for ever. I could _somehat_ agree with the mailing list thingy, maybe we can keep using this list for discussions. > Furthermore, from my experience one does not need domain > knowledge to successfully package and maintain packages in Debian. > What makes more sense to me, is organizing packages into teams based on > programming languages and build/test systems, as such teams indeed > possess specific knowledge. I think most of the mails asking for help in > debian-med concern language and build system problems, not > domain-specific issues. I'm sorry, but I have to admit this argument of yours is sloppy, Andrius. By this logic, we could push entire debian-med python packages into python-team, java packages into java-team and so on... You also mentioned debian-med above, so if you think everything would be per-language organised, why do you think separate teams (like -med, or -astro) should even exist? The whole point of blends is to help people with "specific" needs, right. and such teams help organize that in a reliable way. And Fwiw, people do ask sometimes about software in debian-med (check element), people do file bug reports there, et. al. Many upstreams are tied to -med team, and that could've never happened without domain-specific knowledge. > I am worried reading about R packages being moved from debian-r to new > debian-math. I am afraid doing so might negatively impact their quality. You are right in your worries, but I have some statistics to present here. See here[1] or more specifically, look here[2,3] You would notice that in recent times, the most active people there (Andreas, myself, Steffen, Dylan etc) are also the members of debian-med and also the members of debian-science. And if we have a math team, I'm sure atleasts some of these people would be involved there. The number of pure math software in R package team is in no way overflowing, so I really think this should be manageable. The probability of it having a bit-rot will be less -- atleast not high with me, Andreas, Doug et. al. being around. However if you very strongly feel about it, we could leave the R packages where they are and continue maintaining them under R package umbrella. Should you want more explanation, do let me know and I'll be happy to discuss. [1]: http://blends.debian.net/liststats/ [2]: http://blends.debian.net/liststats/uploaders_r-pkg.png [3]: http://blends.debian.net/liststats/commitstat_pkg-r.png Nilesh
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature