Re: Packages to upgrade before the freeze
Le Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 08:53:54AM +0200, Andreas Tille a écrit :
>
> How important would you rate:
>
> #364908: Please build arb for powerpc
>
> The problem is that upstream of Arb has kind of a strange release
> behaviour. They issue tarballs from time to time but do not release
> a stable version. When asking in private mail I've got the answer
> that the Debian released version might be "more stable" than the
> newer released tarballs. All in all it is hard to decide which
> version should be in Debian and manual package building on different
> architectures (arb is non-free unfortunately) makes only sense if
> you can be sure that users will need it. The fact that I do not
> own a powerpc makes it even worse.
Hi Andreas,
In my opinion, we have so many things to do for debian-med that the
needs of the users, may they be explicit or supposed, seem to be the
best rule do decide were we focus our efforts.
Then, in the case of Arb, it is obvious from the licence that upstream
is not trying to establish a strong user base yet, so the impact of
keeping arb up to date on many architectures is likely to be
disappointing compared to the work it requires.
The bug you cite is from me, and I am able to build Arb by myself.
Importantly, I built Arb to "just give it a try", for a project I do on
my free time (and which is stalled until I package emboss 4.0.0, because
I would like to verify that the strange handling of "N"s in the
numbering of the sequences is a bug of 2.8.0 or a feature of all
releases). I filed the wishlist bug mostly for the sake of signalling
that building on ppc is possible (this was unsure at the time): as I
already built it, I do not need you to build it for me ;)
In conclusion, we need to guide ourselves from the feedback from our
users. This means that the people using medical and biological software
on Debian must become aware that we think of them as "our" users. A
little bit of promotion would surely help, and each message would be the
opportunity to remind that anybody can post to debian-med@l.d.o without
the need for subscribing.
In my case, I think that my project of "making Debian the best platform
for multiple sequence alignment in the world" is 80 % done, and when it
will be 100 %, I will prepare a news release wich can be used on the
debian website, and in many other places such as scientific newsgroups
and forums. Definitely, when Michael will be satisfied of his work for
medical imaging, he can do the same. Improvements of the CDD and the
metapackages are also the kind of things we can promote.
PS: About non-free, there are people on debian-science who discuss about
the opportunity of making a separate debian-science autobuilt
repository. In that case, it could make sense to relocate packages such
as Arb there: we would lose the bts (unless they implement one), but
would gain autobuildig (they seem to be OK with non-DFSG programs such
as the "do not make money with my work" softwares). In any case, neither
non-free nor this yet to be born repository are part of Debian...
Have a nice sunday,
--
Charles Plessy
http://charles.plessy.org
Wako, Saitama, Japan
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