Re: [Ann] Sponsored root server for Debian Med (Was: New maintainer for biopython and wise)

[Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de>]

[I'm writing in public to the list because it might be interesting for
 other newbies.  I deleted the quotes of the private mail.]

On Sun, 1 Feb 2009, VidAyer wrote:

> ... something in private mail

I'd recommend reading

      http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/docs/policy.html
      http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/

> IRC.debian.org to #debian-med but the channel was empty

Well, the #debian-med channel exists - but I do not know whether
it was successfully used ever.  One main reason for this fact is,
that I personally stay away basically from chat techniques as a
principle to save my time.  FOr me it is just another communication
channel and the more channels you add the more time you spend.
I'm hanging around sometimes in IRC whan I'm on conferences or
currently the Debian Edu developer gathering in Trondheim - so
I might join later this day (will go to breakfast now).

Another reason is that I'm technically blockes from IRC in my working
hours.  But if you want to meet me in IRC it is fine to agree
upon a meeting time.

> unlogged channels
> like #debian-women and #debian-mentors.

I have no idea what you mean with "unlogged" channel - I'm rathe
an IRC newbee.

> http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/drugdb
> http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/pharma
>
> These have no packages listed and the smartenrx and drugref.org link
> is broken. If packages are not available I am curious why they are
> listed there.

Well, it's a shame that the links do not work.  The problem is that
these pages were not very good maintained and in the last time this
became even worse since I went over to the tasks pages system:

   http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/tasks/

which automatically gernerates what we have.  The fact that we currently
do not have any packages listed in drugdb and pharma is basically the
reason why we do not yet have such autogenerated pages:  For the moment
for technical reasons we need at least one existing package per
category is needed.  I'm working on this - but I can do this only in my
spare time.

On the other hand if you look at the tasks pages it is perfectly intended
to also list projects which are not yet available as package in Debian.
The rationale is that you can use this as todo list - so just pick your
favourite project and try to start training your packaging skills with it.
 ;-)

> Since many pages were like that I found gnumed.org , and their website
> didnt tell if they want help with packaging or not.

Well, gnumed-client has a package in Debian and the server is at least
available in experimental.  The remaining issues are not really a good
target to tackle for beginners - but testing the stuff and providing
comments is helpful as well.

> http://wiki.gnumed.de/bin/view/Gnumed/GettingStarted
> http://wiki.gnumed.de/bin/view/Gnumed/GnumedFaqs#HowLearnMore
> does not talk of packaging for Debian either.  So does that mean the
> project is not in need of packaging help?

I think so:

$ apt-cache search gnumed
gnumed-client - medical practice management - Client
gnumed-client-de - medical practice management - Client for German users
gnumed-common - medical practice management - common files
gnumed-doc - medical practice management - Documentation
gnumed-server - medical practice management - server

and I'm currently working on the code to make sure that
gnumed-server is displayed correctly as package in experimental at

   http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/tasks/practice.html

which does not work right now but it is my plan to implement this
in the next couple of days because the "yellow" section caused the
most confusion in the last couple of weeks.

> Apologies for bothering you with these queries but if the project does
> not list where help is needed how do I get that information?

Questions are always fine and I decided to answer tham publicly to
enable other newcomers reading the answers as well.  We also have
one place were the helpo you might like to provide is listed:

    http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMedTodo

It seems that our documentation for newcomers also needs help.. :-(
Perhaps you also might like to work on this because you obviosely
had to suffer from this fact.

Many thanks for your comments.  I hope I was able to clarify
things.  Kind regards

    Andreas.

--
http://fam-tille.de