Aw: Bioinformatics course in debian-med - feasibility?
Dear Daniel,
> We plan to convert an open access bioinformatics course to a Debian
> package. Because debian-med is an active, helpful and relevant project, I
> think debian-med would be a sensible route to achieve this.
This is quite a compliment, I'd say. Many thanks!
> The course is available as part of a ready-to-run Raspbian SD card image,
> 4273pi:
>
> http://eggg.st-andrews.ac.uk/4273pi
>
> We are willing to put in work. At the moment, I am keen to check technical
> feasibility.
I think it is just fine. The Raspberry is no direct derivative of Debian,
but this you all know better than I do.
> Tasks we have in mind include:
>
> - More clearly identifying dependencies on external packages and between
> components within of the course.
I am not sure about what you mean, but remain assured that you only need to
list the packages are identified by
dpkg -S pathtobinaryyouexecuteorlibraryyoulinkto
> - Editing the course material to suit a CC0 licence.
This is not a requirement for Debian. You could be very commercial and
we would still be happy for you using and explaining the packages.
> - Preparation of a .deb.
Of the course? Hm. Right. But personally I would be more interested in
seeing the course/tutorial in the first place.
> - Contribution of the .deb to debian-med.
So far we have only used Wiki.debian.org to describe how to use the packages
and ship the documentation that comes with the upstream source tree.
> Does this seem possible?
I am just not sure that this truly is what you want. In my experience the
package would be outdated once it is shipping with stable and you will
refer to the online version anyway. Also, to profit most from comments
sent by your readers, you want them online and leave their insights somewhere.
A Debian package sets you back much into the pre-Web 2.0 world. A wiki
or github site is much better.
> I am new to the details of debian-med. I will be at the Debian Med Sprint
> Weekend, Stonehaven (Jan-Feb 2014) which will be useful.
Excellent!
> At the moment, feasibility is the question. Advice on this point will be
> welcome.
Technically - yes. For a community-forming view - less so, IMHO. There is
another point. I presume most of the work to be towards making the students
understand the biology first, workflows second and command line options third.
The installation of tools, i.e. the Debian-specific bits, will only make up
the tiniest fraction of the effort. It would be a shame to not let others
profit more from your work that happen to be bound to e.g. openSUSE or another
friendly distro. To have as many readers as possible, and to avoid Debian
to be special in any other way than that it saves some work for those with
a need for those particular packages since Debian has them already, I would
prefer a general approach, nothing Debian-specific.
Many thanks and greetings
Steffen
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