Re: Review of all the Debian Med debtags, and questions.
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008, Charles Plessy wrote:
I reviewed all the Debtags of Debian Med (except latest mgltools); I
hope it gave me a better understanding of the system.
http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/todo.html?maint=debian-med-packaging%40lists.alioth.debian.org
Charless, many thanks for your effort.
First of all, I realised that Debtags is not a tree structure:
Field::Biology and Field::Biology:Molecular are two different tags. Also
I realised that subdivisions like this can be expressed by combinations
of simpler tags. For this reason, I would like to ask the removal of:
field::biology:bioinformatics
field::biology:molecular
field::biology:structural
field::medicine:imaging
Reading this I realised that my perception of DebTags was wrong (because
I also had the concept of a tree structure). If there is no tree structure
you are perfectly right with the removal.
Many of our programs work on biological sequences. I know we discussed
this before, but I really think that works-with:sequence would make
sense. In combination with field::biology, it would fully replace
field::biology:bioinformatics. I volunteer to do the transition by hand
if necessary. We currently have 84 field::biology:bioinformatics
packages.
ACK.
I am undecided about what to do with the biology:: facet. We have no
plans to make programmatic use of it for the moment, and I did not use
it during my review, as it is quite parcellar. If nobody objects, I
would recommend its removal.
When I'm unsure I try to compare with others: How do other sciences
handle the facet tag?
I acknowledge that the Debtags team is under constant pressure from
developpers who want their pet tag added to the list, and that
underpopulated instances are no excuse to create more of them. However,
I would like to suggest the following ones (in addition to to
works-with:sequence, that I strongly support instead of just suggest).
Support +1.
works-with::trees
We would use this for our phylogeny packages, and many other tools not
related to biology could use it. works-with::graphs could be an
alternative, but potentially confusing.
+1
use::simulatinng
s/simulatinng/simulating/
Or should it rather be "simulation"
At least two of our packages would use it (adun.app, epigrass), and
others like flightgear could definitely use it too. I think it would
easily gain critical mass.
Sounds very reasonable also for other fields.
special::unmaintained
We unfortunately package some programs that are Upstream-dead, as many
other Debian packages are. Sadly, this tag could become very popular.
Even more reasonable and useful than simulating ... and sad.
works-with::temperature
We would have three candidate packages, but criticall mass would
probably attained with sensors and weather packages.
Probably nice - I personally see not so much use for it than in the
other tags - but perhaps I'm lacking some knowledge.
The following ones are just ideas not really reflecting our needs:
made-of::data:examples, or role::example
role::translation
role::library (for languages like Perl, the current dichotomy is not relevant)
use::calculating
role::policy
We actually have one such package, mipe (Minimal Information for PCR
experiments), and soon our Group policy will be
part of a package as well.
uitoolkit::xulrunner (in our case: biofox)
Out of the other suggestions I specifically support the latest one because
I think there is a real need for it.
Thanks for your review
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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