Re: Starting packaging VistA (Re: LSM in Geneva)
There is a derivative of WorldVistA EHR that has been packaged already but the
caveat is that you can package it but you can't update it using the usual
mechanism so Ignacio Valdez, who did the packaging, makes sure that the
instance won't be deleted and overwritten by a new one unless someone goes to
considerable effort to make that happen.
Astronaut is the version that does this. This is not a version that
WorldVistA supports, not because of the packaging but because of other issues.
That said, we will probably have Ignacio package the official WorldVistA EHR
for us in the near future. He has both packages for Debian and Red Hat.
--
Nancy E. Anthracite, MD
President, CMO & Director
WorldVistA
nancy@worldvista.org
240-246-0123
240-793-7436 (cell)
On Friday, July 06, 2012, Luis Ibanez wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
>
> On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 4:14 AM, Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> wrote:
> > Hi again,
> >
> > I tried to consolidate the vista entry in the tasks file[1] and your
> > packaging files. The first thing I noticed that we have two ITPs: One
> > for Vista[2] and one for World-Vista[3]. Could you clarify the
> > difference?
>
> Let me give it a try,
> and hopefully others can also contribute to complete a full picture.
>
>
> a) VistA : was developed by Federal Employees
> at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
> http://www.va.gov/vista_monograph/
>
>
> b) As a consequence VistA is not copyrighted,
> and it is in the Public Domain.
>
>
> c) Until last year, the normal way to get the source code of
> VistA was to place a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
> request to the VA. The software that is delivered through
> this mechanism is redacted. Many pieces are removed
> from it, in particular: pieces pertaining to encryption, and
> some modules that are subject to proprietary licenses.
>
>
> d) For several years, different organizations have obtained
> this FOIA versions of VistA from the VA and have
> recomposed the missing parts in order to create a
> full working distribution.
>
> Examples of these organizations are:
>
> - WorldVista (a non-profit organization)
> - Medsphere (a commercial company)
> - DSS Inc. (a commercial company)
>
>
> e) The WorldVistA distribution has been used for many
> VistA deployments, particularly one in the country of
> Jordan, and a very successful one in the Oroville
> Hospital in California.
> http://openhealthnews.com/blogs/ramaduro/2011-11-20/oroville-vista-implemen
> tation-raises-bar
>
>
> f) Although the VA has been the official development
> organization for VistA, and VistA has been in the Public
> Domain, the VA has lacked a mechanism for benefiting
> from the improvements made to VistA outside of the VA.
>
> In order to fix that, last year, the VA launched an organization
> to create an Open Source environment for VistA, and to
> create the conditions by which VistA could continue to
> grow and improve, this time taking advantage of all what
> is great and good from open source software practices
> and open source communities.
>
>
> g) This organization is called OSEHRA:
> http://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=2153
> http://osehra.org/
>
> One of the missions of OSEHRA is to work along with all
> the other participants of the VistA ecosystem, and build a
> stronger community. WorldVista has been very supportive
> of OSEHRA, and has contributed a lot to the infrastructure
> and steering of the organization.
>
> BTW, I'm a member of the OSEHRA technical staff,
> so, if my description sounds biased, now you know why... ;-)
>
>
> h) Since multiple organizations have created distributions of
> VistA we tend to list them as follows:
>
> - VistA FOIA : The distribution coming from the VA
> - WorldVista : The distribution coming from WorldVista non-profit
> - vxVistA: The distribution from DSS Inc.
> - OpenVista: The distribution from Medsphere.
>
>
> i) There are also cousins of VistA, that have followed parallel
> evolution tracks, and are much more independent than a
> distribution. In particular:
>
> - RPMS : From the US Indian Health Service (IHS)
> - CHCS : From the US Department of Defense
>
>
> j) One can summarize the differences by making an analogy
> between VistA and a Linux distribution. There are many flavours
> of Linux Distributions, and one can't really answer the question:
>
> Which one is the "True" Linux Distribution ?
>
> Although, I'm sure that in this list
> many participants will suggest a "particular" answer... :-)
>
>
> Moreover some Linux Distributions derive from others.
> For example Ubuntu and Mint derive from Debian.
>
> In a similar way, WorldVistA, OpenVistA, and vxVistA derive
> from the VistA FOIA version that is released from the VA.
>
> These derived distributions add a lot to VistA, since they
> complete the parts that were removed from VistA during
> the FOIA redaction process.
>
> Some Distributions go well beyond "improvements", for
> example, several of the distributions above, have been
> extended in order to satisfy the requirements for passing
> "Meaningful Use" certification, which is critical for the
> adoption of VistA as EHR in private hospitals.
>
>
> I think it will be reasonable to plan for packaging multiple VistA
> distributions. In particular, I would suggest the following:
>
>
> Vista Distribution Potential Debian package name
>
> VistA FOIA vista, or vista-foia, or vista-ehr
> WorldVistA worldvista, or world-vista, worldvista-ehr
> vxVistA vxvista, or vx-vista
> OpenVista openvista, or open-vista
>
>
> In http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=541245
> Bhaskar choose "worldvista-ehr" as package name for WorldVistA,
> and in http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=541242
> he choose "VistA", (with the uppercase/lowercase) which is indeed
> the most common spelling of VistA.
>
> BTW, when changing the name I got the impression that Debian
> packages do not use uppercase in the names. Is that right ?
>
>
> Looking for precedents of this type of "multiple" packaging, I would
> think that this is similar to what was done at some point for gcc and
> egcs. (although this gcc case was more of a fork, than a different
> distribution of the same software).
>
> > The next thing is that the Homepage in the ITP for Vista[2] from Bhaskar
> > is [4] clearly contains the string "VistA". However the homepage you
> > injected into the control file[5] is totally different[6] is mentioning
> > OSEHRA but the terms VistA, Mumps, FIS or something like this are not on
> > this page. I'd call this confusing. Any reason not to use [4] as
> > homepage?
>
> 1) Yes, it is confusing.
> This is due to the multiplicity of VistA distributions explained
> above.
>
> 2) My suggested solution is to create separate Debian packages
> for each distribution. The packaging files will actually be very
> similar (as far as "how" the package is built), and their main
> differences will be the associations of homepage and upstream
> team.
>
> Once we package one of the VistA distributions,
> the packaging of the others should follow very easily.
>
> 3) The control page for all the packages will probably include
> Mumps and fis-gtm, since at this point this is the key package
> that they all depend on.
>
> > The description in the tasks file[1] speaks about flavours of VistA - if
> > OSEHRA is such a thing this information would definitely belong to the
> > description and also a reason why this flavour was choosen for
> > packaging. I admit that some slight hints could be read out of your
> > copyright file.
>
> Agreed,
>
> I suggest to take the points (a) to (j) from my long answer above
> and add them to the description; of course after we consult with
> WorldVistA, and others and reword the statements as needed
> until we are all comfortable with them.
>
> > Finally your last paragraph in the long description is:
> > VistA is implemented in M/MUMPS, and on Linux depends on the GT.M
> > compiler and database being available.
> >
> > That's rather metainformation which belongs into the Depends relations
> > (were it just is) and not into the long description.
>
> Sure,
> I'm happy to modify this to make it match
> Debian practices and policies.
>
>
> While we converge with others in this conversation, I'll move forward
> with the technical aspects of packaging the VistA FOIA, so that we
> have something concrete for LSM next week.
>
> I think we have at this point all the ingredients needed for a first draft
> of the package. We should then do a tight review of the packaging
> files and put them in order.
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
> Luis
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
>
> > Kind regards
> >
> > Andreas.
> >
> > [1] http://debian-med.debian.net/tasks/his
> >
> > (at least as long as the cron job did not fetched the data from your
> >
> > commits - otherwise have a look here in the vista section
> >
> > http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/blends/projects/med/trunk/debian-med
> > /tasks/his?view=markup
> >
> > [2] http://bugs.debian.org/541242
> > [3] http://bugs.debian.org/541245
> > [4] http://worldvista.org/AboutVistA
> > [5]
> > svn://svn.debian.org/svn/debian-med/trunk/packages/vista/trunk/debian/co
> > ntrol [6] http://www.osehra.org
> >
> > --
> > http://fam-tille.de
> >
> >
> > --
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