Re: casacore-data uploaded to mentors.debian.net
Hi Gijs, and Benda,
Gijs Molenaar <gijsmolenaar@gmail.com> writes:
> There is no true central management of casacore-data, people just role their
> own. NRAO builds them, CSIRO builds them and also ASTRON builds them:
>
> ftp://ftp.astron.nl/outgoing/Measures/
What we need is not just the result of the build, but the sources and
the build procedure. The process needs to be transparent for the users.
When looking into the sources of casacore (and casacore-data), I
couldn't find the URLs of the sources that are downloaded to actually
build casacore-data (there is just no "measuresdata.rc" file). Since you
just met the people of Astron: can you post their .rc file? What is the
exact build procedure?
> The one distributed by Astron also contains additional information about for
> example the LOFAR telescope. It is made with custom scripts consisting of
> fortrain and c++ code, glued together with tch.
These scripts should go into the casacore-data "rules".
> What I would do is just use the data from the ASTRON FTP server and
> update the package every week.
As you said: this procedure is done locally anyway, so there may be
different (and evolving) needs to the package. For Debian, we should
ensure that a user has the possibility to manage this himself instead of
depending on Astron for this. What should he do if he wants to add his
own telescope to it, for example?
I already repeated this argument several times, but I didn't get a
response from you or from Benda, why you regardless seem to insist on
using a pre-build data package instead of building it yourself. Could
one of you please explain why my proposal (build it from source via
measuresdata.cc) does not work? Circular dependencies are not the
problem here, as we already learned. The measuresdata.csh script is
simple enough; it just downloads the files that are in the .rc file and
then calls the compiled measuresdata.cc program. Why can't we do that in
the build procedure of casacore-data, with the files downloaded from ftp
(which are in the .rc file) as sources?
The situation that we include a data file that was build from unknown
sources by an unknown procedure, with no way for anyone to reproduce or
change them, is quite unsatisfying and IMO contradicting to the spirit
of Debian. And, as a scientist, I would not accept a dependency from
data which I cannot trace or reproduce.
Best regards
Ole
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