Re: How much interest in a "debian-science.org" repository?
Hi Michael,
These are excellent questions. Let me reply with my thoughts.
On 7/19/06, Michael Hanke <michael.hanke@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 12:07:40PM -0400, Kevin B. McCarty wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> Currently there are a fair number of repositories of science-related
> unofficial Debian packages out there. I've been thinking that it might
> make sense to consolidate them into a single site. This would have
> several advantages:
- snip -
I think this is a great idea and Debian-science community could gain a
lot with this central repository. But IMHO its success might depend
on the details:
1. What Debian versions will be supported (or what Debian derivatives)?
[snip]
I know that some people simply do not care about Ubuntu, but there is
obviously a demand and most of the time porting a package to an Ubuntu
release is just recompiling it.
What I want to say is, that I would prefer a repository that provides
packages for every distribution and platform that people (maintainers)
are willing to support.
It makes sense to me to provide both Debian and Ubuntu packages as
long as someone can be found to build them. Maybe this could be a job
for an automatic buildd network. I take your point (below) about the
need to trust uploaders seriously, though. Every maintainer who
contributes to the repository can't be expected to have a full set of
{Debian, Ubuntu} x {stable, testing, unstable} x {i386, amd64,
powerpc...} machines to build on. So there will have to be people who
build packages for the less common platforms (either by admining a
buildd, or else just manually by request as some have already
volunteered for). These people will need to be highly trusted.
2. What are the requirements a package has to meet to be included in the
repository (e.g. license)?
If a package is perfect in any sense it could obviously go directly
into the Debian archive. Therefore the repository will contain
imperfect packages and the question is what kind of imperfection is
tolerated (lintian error, minor/major licensing issues, ...)?
This is just my feeling, but I expect that the main relaxation would
be on licensing restrictions. (Not so relaxed that we might get sued
of course!) As long as someone could get permission from upstream for
the repository (and its mirrors?) to distribute a package, it could be
put in the archive. This would help in the case of things like Pythia
where the author doesn't bother to give his work a specific license,
but might be willing to permit redistribution in .deb format if the
source code is unchanged.
I was also thinking that the unofficial repository could include stuff
that has too little demand per unit filesize to go into Debian proper
even if freely licensed. This might include obscure specialized
programs like CERN's Patchy, or large but specialized data files like
those of GEANT4 or the HIPPARCOS astronomical catalogs. I'm sure
biologists can think of examples here too.
IMO the quality of the packaging ought to remain high, for the sake of
the reputation of the repository as a whole. This could therefore be
a good opportunity to teach packaging skills.
3. Who will be able to upload packages?
[snip]
2. Perhaps a procedure similar to Alioth would be a reasonable way to deal
with upload rights: Potential contributers explain what they want to
provide and get upload rights if they provide a solid explanation.
From that point on they have the right to upload new packages, but
not to upload new versions of packages already in the archive where
they are not (co-)maintainers. DDs might be an exception of the rule.
This should not limit the number of contributors and introduces a
minimal protection against bad guys.
I think this sounds very reasonable. I'd be scared to have anyone
able to upload anything. It might even be worthwhile to implement a
NEW queue of some kind to make sure that new uploads meet some minimum
standard of quality.
The main disadvantage is that somebody has to implement this.
:-)
best regards,
--
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu> Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544
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