Choosing "proper" Section field (Was: Bug#742639: ITP: python-expyriment -- Python library for cognitive and neuroscientific experiments)

[Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu>]

Hi Oliver,

On Tue, Apr 01, 2014 at 09:14:33PM +0200, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:
> * Oliver Lindemann <oliver.lindemann@uni-potsdam.de> [2014-04-01 19:02]:
> 
> >Thanks. I applied all patches and kept, in line with Andreas
> >comment, the section as "science".
> 
> You might then apply the patch attached below for overriding the
> Lintian warning.

Well, I might have choosen a wrong wording:  I tried to suggest
following lintian in using "Section: python".  The thing is that this
Section field has more or less no real meaning and it finally does not
really matter what you put there.  But if lintian *tells* you that
policy would expect some section I'm personally following its advise
rather than using some lintian overrides.  If a package clearly falls
into *both* sections there is so few reason to worry about the section
field that there is no point in adding any extra line of code (like an
lintian override).

I'm trying to rephrase my arguing a bit:

  In a Section field the package maintainer tries to guess what a
  user might do with the package - in this specific case either
  Python programming *(exclusive) or* scienctific research.  This
  exclusive or is obviously nonsense.

  In Blends tasks different users declare in what field they are
  using a certain package and for sure a package can show up in
  various differnet tasks.  So this package could show up in
  *different* sciences and - just to stretch the example - in
  certain games programming or education.

So the tasks concept is to some extend fixing the Section concept of
debian/control which is weak in several ways but we carry it for
historic reasons.  Finding a value which keeps lintian happy is a
perfectly valid way to deal with this in my opinion (as long as lintian
is not really wrong - which I can not see in this example).

Since this is my personal opinion I'm perfectly fine with every choice
you might draw.

Kind regards

       Andreas.

-- 
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