PDBx dictionary in Debian [Was: Re: Bug#974973: ITP: libcifpp -- A library for creating and manipulating mmCIF and PDB files containing macro molecular structure information]

[Andrius Merkys <merkys@debian.org>]

Hi Martin,

On 2020-11-17 15:59, Maarten L. Hekkelman wrote:
> Initially I was, but now I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm currently
> rewriting that part.
> 
> I used to use mrc to store mmcif_pdbx dictionary files inside an
> executable. But those dictionaries change very often and so I now think
> it is better to have cron job polling for these files weekly and store
> them in /var/cache/libcifpp/
> 
> Lintian is however complaining a little over this choice, /var/cache is
> not a very common location to store stuff. But I guess this is OK?

I am not sure about /var/cache approach and cronjob polls. I understand
the need to keep mmcif_pdbx up-to-date, but I think lintian complaints
are rarely baseless. I am adding debian-med@ to CC, maybe someone has a
better solution?

Packaging mmcif_pdbx as a package of its own would be an option.
However, to keep it up-to-date in stable Debian release one would have
to backport it there often, and I am not sure release managers would
allow that. There are packages like tzdata that get frequent updates and
backports, but tzdata is security-sensitive.

Best,
Andrius