Dear list,
Currently there are a fair number of repositories of science-related
unofficial Debian packages out there. I've been thinking that it might
make sense to consolidate them into a single site. This would have
several advantages:
- Permit convenient one-stop "shopping" for unofficial scientific .debs
with only one sources.list entry (well, two counting deb-src)
- Better PR for the unofficial .debs. Instead of a dozen different
unofficial repositories, now only one would need to be publicized,
perhaps with an obvious name like "www.debian-science.org".
- Possibility of more complicated dependency graphs between unofficial
packages
- Possibility (someday) to set up a buildd network that can autobuild
all the packages for various architectures
- Testbed for packages that ultimately can enter Debian proper
- Convenient unofficial source for packages that can't enter Debian, for
whatever reason, as long as the maintainers had permission to distribute
them
I was talking to Brett Viren about the possibility to host CLHEP and
GEANT4 .debs at his site, maintaining a repository for unofficial
physics related packages. So the question is, would other Debian
Scientists, in fields other than physics, also be interested in using
this repository?
The idea needs a lot of setup so probably not much will happen
immediately; this email is mainly to gauge the amount of interest.
best regards,
--
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu> Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544