Re: Bug#709330: ITP: cpl-plugin-hawki -- ESO data reduction pipeline for HAWK-I
Julian Taylor <jtaylor.debian@googlemail.com> writes:
> On 22.05.2013 20:30, Olе Streicher wrote:
>> These recipes are the main (only?) use case for the "cpl" package
>> family. CPLs Popcon is ~80, which is not much but shows some interest in
>> CPL (and therefore its plugins). So I felt it is useful to package the
>> plugins as well.
>>
>> Since ESO data are downloadable publicely (everyone can create an
>> account on <http://www.eso.org/UserPortal>), it seems natural to provide
>> an easy access to precompiled astronomical data reduction software.
>>
>> Do you disagree here?
> yes, just because its open source and publicly available does not mean
> it belongs in Debian.
Hmm, I am not sure what "belongs to Debian". When browsing through the
archive and ITPs, I find that the main reason against packaging is that
a similar package is already in Debian. "Too special" is usually not an
argument, and also not covered by the policy. Contrary, the policy
defines as a Debian goal "to allow us to make as much software available
as we can". [1]
> CPL makes sense as it can in principle be used by non ESO related
> products, this is not the case for the instrument specific recipes.
I am quite sure that the popcon of cpl does not belong to non-ESO
products -- the library is quite specific (especially cpldfs). So I
guess that the popcon actually comes from people interested in ESO data
reduction. They are probably also interested in the specific pipelines,
aren't they?
Package sizes (excluding calibration files) are less than 1 MB per
package, so they will probably not fill up the Debian disk space. Also,
since the packages all have almost the same structure, the maintenance
shall not take too much work. And, finally, the ESO VLT is one of the
largest telescopes, and providing software to process its files could
encourage astronomers to use the existing files for their own analysis.
But I must admit that I couldn't find a similar package f.e. for a CERN
experiment, so I am still unsure.
Best regards
Ole
[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html
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