Dear Debian Mentors, I am planing to package the SWISS EPHEMERIS library and its data. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=635672 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=636089 The SWISS EPHEMERIS data is 36 Meg in 54 files. The Swiss Ephemeris library can be used with out installed data if the user has a private copy of the data. I would like to encourage data sharing which is the reason for packaging the Swiss Ephemeris data. Any of the 54 data files could be needed or not needed depending on what the user is doing. For more info about the Swiss Ephemeris see: http://www.astro.com/swisseph/ http://www.astro.com/swisseph/swisseph.htm http://swissephauto.blackpatchpanel.com/ I believe that for desktop users the cost of managing this is less than the cost of installing all the data. It costs for people, either administrators or users to think about things and storage is getting cheap. However some day some one may want to put say, a astrology web server on a low memory device such as home router hardware. These people will want to control exactly what data they will install. I plan to create a package that will include all the data, but I want to provide for people to come a long later and take a more fine grained approach. I propose that each file have its own VIRTUAL PACKAGE. A package with a combination of files would provide and conflict with each virtual package for each file it includes. That way people could create a more fine grained approach to this problem with no risk of two packages providing the same file being installed as the same time. I would like to ask if this is an appropriate use of the virtual package concept? How should I choose the virtual package names? I understand there is a procedure involving Debian-devel consensus for using virtual packages. http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.txt However, there is an exception: > Packages MUST NOT use virtual package names (except privately, amongst > a cooperating group of packages) unless they have been agreed upon and > appear in this list. Since all packages using these virtual names would be astrology programs using the Swiss Ephemeris or the Swiss Ephemeris library, could this use be viewed as "privately, amongst a cooperating group of packages"? If so, I could skip the debian-devel consensus step. If I need to go the debian-devel I want to get the bugs out of my plan first. I thank everyone for their input and comments. -- Paul Elliott 1(512)837-1096 pelliott@BlackPatchPanel.com PMB 181, 11900 Metric Blvd Suite J http://www.free.blackpatchpanel.com/pme/ Austin TX 78758-3117
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