Re: some remarcs to your project debian-med
On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, Alan Chen wrote:
[I just post my answer to the list to let others notice. I hope not to
infringe your privace. Please ask such general questions on the list
and *not* in private. I do not like to be busy answering all those
questions several times in private.]
> Reading over the comments on this thread, I can't help wondering if
> there is some place for the maintainers/supporters of debian
> "purpose-driven" sub distributions to discuss common administrative
> issues. In particular
>
> debian-jr
> debian-med
Those two are comparable with the same administrative idea.
> demudi
This is different from the both above.
> debian-bio (this is the first I've heard of it)
This is just an idea and not currently living. I'm not particular related
to this.
> seem to have a large subset of common issues of how purpose-driven
> debian distributions might work. How should these package collections
> interact with the "regular" debian distro?
Debian-Med (as well as Debian-Jr) are part of the regular Debian
distribution. We do not want to split anything out of Debian.
The reason is that we do not have the manpower to build a distribution
of our own. We just want to make Debian itself fit for special
purposes and relay on the overall stability of Debian.
> Are there times when there
> is a need to package the same software with different configurations
> under the the "purpose-driven" system?
I see no reason for really different configurations. If there has
something to be adjusted we have to convince the maintainer of a certain
package to allow enough flexibility that easy configuration (for instance
using debconf) can be done. This can also be a profit for the Debian
distribution.
> (This might be a particular
> need for debian-jr) How would one accomplish that? Do they need
> modified installer packages?
Once the Debian base system is installed you will have to install
so called meta packages which are provided by Debian-Med. I hope
to get some examples ready soon.
> For me (maybe I'm dense :), I have yet to
> see a place where a user interested in one of these specific areas
> might install these collections. (other than installing the regular
> debian base and then manually installing the package list/task of items
> associated with the distro.)
I see no reason why anybody who wants to install Debian packages does
not want the Debian base. It is small, rock solid, well tested and has
no unneeded rubish included. But if you think about an extra distribution
- hey, it is free. Just feel free to take anyone you want and build
your own super-duper distribution for medical care. But I personally
do not want to do that. The only thing I would consider to be useful
is to ship a CD different from the official Debian distribution which
contains all packages of Debian-Med on the first disk (if possible).
This would be more handy instead of a stack of CDs for the official
Debian distribution. But it will just contain the same base packages.
An add on could perhaps be a live demo cd or something like that.
There are some clear facts why not to split Debian-Med outside Debian:
- Wide user base of Debian cares for stability in the
BTS (Bug Track System).
- Debian-Med bugs can handled via the BTS.
- We do not have to care about the base which is kept in sync
with upstream by the responsible maintainer.
> On Thu, Jan 31, 2002 at 12:29:32PM +0100, Tille, Andreas wrote:
> > On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, Rune Linding - EMBL Biocomputing Unit wrote:
Please avoid those stupid "Writing-On-Top-Quoting-On-Bottom". Just
read the relevant paragraphs of the netiquette.
Kind regards
Andreas.
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