Re: {debian,pkg}-science repository [Was: Science linguistics and debian-science SVN repository at alioth]

[Manuel Prinz <debian@pinguinkiste.de>]

Hi everyone!

Sorry for jumping a little late into the discussion, hope it's not too
late already! Andreas, I really like your idea on unifying things
related to science in Debian. I also have some packages I work on that
are science related but do not classically match any of the current
tasks.

Am Donnerstag, den 08.05.2008, 13:55 +0200 schrieb Sylvestre Ledru:
> Le jeudi 08 mai 2008 à 07:22 +0200, Andreas Tille a écrit :
> > Would you take over the job to restructure either pkg-science
> > or start a debian-science repository?  I leave the choice of the name
> > to you and also the VCS system you prefer.  Just let something happen
> > and lets move on.  
> I can also help if needed and I care about the VCS.

I'd also like to help. To also address my concerns on the name: As
Andreas already said, I also think naming discussions tend to go
nowhere. BUT in this case, I'd really prefer "debian-science" as a name
since I was totally confused about the different "subprojects" as a
user; I also know users who have troubles to get it right. Since most
users already know the debian-science mailing list, their first guess is
a debian-science packaging group under the same name, that does not
exists. I like Sylvestre's pkg-science effort but IMHO Debian is not
about packaging from a user's point of view, and users is what Debian is
for. ("debian-science" is a more user-friendly name, even if it's "just"
about packaging, so to speak. The pkg-* namespace is OK for packages but
IMHO not for a group addressing a certain task.)

I also do care about the VCS. Personally, I'm very happy with Git that I
tried after last DebConf after hearing so much good things about it;
they turned out to be true. ;) The biggest disadvantage with Subversion
is that one can not work effectively when being offline; I also like
Gits branching feature while experimenting with different changes in the
package. Nevertheless, if the choice is Subversion, I can be happy with
that too.

So I did not see a consensus on what needs to be done: Should we start a
new debian-science project on Alioth and move stuff there? I'm not quite
sure if I got the overall plan right and where help is needed... :-/

Best regards
Manuel