Re: Debian Math Team

[Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu>]

Hi Doug and other Debian Science team members,

at first thanks a lot for the step you did.  I think it is a move into
the right direction.  As far as I've read the worries about this step
here in the thread these seem to be:

  1. Another "one-man" team
     I think Ole gave a good answer here:  Its not about creating a
     one-man team but rather attract more people to the team - from
     inside and outside Debian.  For those who have any doubt that this
     can work:  There are 23 people who confirmed, that they became
     DDs *because* Debian Med exists[4].  Debian Med is now nearly
     20 years old.  I would love if Debian Math would beat Debian Med
     in attracting new developers.  (Andrius, you even belong to this
     set. ;-) )

     Those 20 years when the Debian Med project have teached me that
     it is very important to advertise the fact to the world that Debian
     is targeting specific fields of science and IMHO mathematics is
      a) well worth to be advertised
      b) has lots of technically competent people beeing potential DDs

  2. Further fragmentation of debian-science
     I do not think that another Blend will lead to fragmentation of
     Debian Science.  Sure, some mathematics related packages will be
     moved sooner or later but I personally can not see in how far
     this might weaken Debian Science.  I personally see also additional
     contributors for Debian Science once more mathematicans might
     join Debian (as I'm very positive about).

Am Sat, Oct 30, 2021 at 06:18:28PM +0530 schrieb Nilesh Patra:
> Hi Andrius,
> 
> Thanks for replying. See below :-
> 
> On Sat, Oct 30, 2021 at 10:33:02AM +0300, Andrius Merkys wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On 2021-10-29 20:31, Torrance, Douglas wrote:
> > > During the Debian Science BoF at this year's DebConf, there was some
> > > discussion of creating a team devoted to packaging mathematical software.
> > 
> > I agree with Anton here. I do not see how further fragmentation of
> > debian-science could benefit it. I missed the BoF, but maybe there are
> > notes reflecting this decision?
> 
> No notes, Andreas came up with this idea in debconf, you could find it on videos.debian.net.
> But anyways, I have the following point to make:
> 
> 1. Separate team will help keep track of math-specific software, making it easy for
> interested folks to work on them. Currently there is no specific team, and packages
> are scattered across several teams which is (in my eyes) a bit haphazard

+1
 
> 2. debian-math meta-package (with a separate team) -- this will help researchers to get
> math related software and tooling in one go (exactly like the debian-med metapackage)

I definitely see the need for improvement in the very generic tasks of Debian
Science since science-mathematics (and science-mathematics-dev) are not really
what users will be happy about.

Doug, I'll happily give you a kick-start to create a sensible blends framework
which enables more fine grained tasks (and by doing so a more fine QA toolset).
 
> 3. Easier to find and contribute for people -- I am sure there are a lot of people on this list,
> and even DDs who are interested in math, having such a team helps them approach and contribute well.

... which was my point 1. ;-)
 
> 4. Better maintainance - Lots of math softwares which are still lying un-updated, or broken in some ways.
> So it helps improve the overall quality

I can confirm Nilesh is extremely good in dealing with those! (Thanks
Nilesh for all the QA work you are doing in Debian Med!)
 
> 5. We have debichem team for chemistry packages, astro team for astronomy ones, and now even a new robotics team
> We had a new AI team made a few months back. These would also come under science earlier, so if we could
> make teams for specific domains, *and* they are doing well, why not do so for math?
> I mean this comes as a very natural choice to me, considering other blends.

Absolutely!
 
> > Separate team and separate mailing list will have less members than
> > debian-science.
> 
> Well, every other team has started exactly the same way in Debian (i.e. less members) -- it would
> grow with time, I don't think it'll be stalled for ever.
> I could _somehat_ agree with the mailing list thingy, maybe we can
> keep using this list for discussions.

The start is definitely the hardest time and needs a lot of patience.
I would encourage Doug to ask for list creation and I would lurk on
this list.

> > Furthermore, from my experience one does not need domain
> > knowledge to successfully package and maintain packages in Debian.
> > What makes more sense to me, is organizing packages into teams based on
> > programming languages and build/test systems, as such teams indeed
> > possess specific knowledge. I think most of the mails asking for help in
> > debian-med concern language and build system problems, not
> > domain-specific issues. 
> 
> I'm sorry, but I have to admit this argument of yours is sloppy, Andrius. 
> By this logic, we could push entire debian-med python packages into python-team,
> java packages into java-team and so on...

While this would work in principle the point of creating a Blend is to
attract experts who know the algorithm and internals of a certain
software to craft sensible packages and enable thorough testing.  This
is usually not simply a programming language issue.  In Debian Med we
have several upstreams maintaining their software as Debian packages
(after sufficient teaching of the packaging process and for sure
sponsored by a DD).  IMHO exactly this is the strength of the Blends
concept to pair experts of the software with packaging experts.  Even
better if this can be completed to involve users into that effort which
does not (yet) work as good as expected (but this has IMHO more external
reasons which we can hardly solve).
 
> You also mentioned debian-med above, so if you think everything would be per-language
> organised, why do you think separate teams (like -med, or -astro) should even exist?
> 
> The whole point of blends is to help people with "specific" needs, right.
> and such teams help organize that in a reliable way.
> And Fwiw, people do
> ask sometimes about software in debian-med (check element), people do file bug reports there, et. al.
> Many upstreams are tied to -med team, and that could've never happened without domain-specific knowledge.

Exactly.
 
> > I am worried reading about R packages being moved from debian-r to new
> > debian-math. I am afraid doing so might negatively impact their quality.
> 
> You are right in your worries, but I have some statistics to present here.
> See here[1] or more specifically, look here[2,3]

I'm not worried about moving R packages to some other Blend.  It has
turned out to be a good idea to move all R packages from Debian Science,
Debian Med Debichem and possibly others into one language specific team.
However, this had happened since R packages are extremely uniform and
usually come with test suites that can be re-used which to some extend
is taking over the role of an expert knowing the software.  There are
also not really any specific decisions to make about the packaging since
everything is really straightforward.

This is absolutely different to software written in Python, Java or
anything else.
 
> You would notice that in recent times, the most active people there (Andreas, myself, Steffen, Dylan etc)
> are also the members of debian-med and also the members of debian-science.
> And if we have a math team, I'm sure atleasts some of these people would be involved there.

+1
 
> The number of pure math software in R package team is in no way overflowing, so I really think this should
> be manageable. The probability of it having a bit-rot will be less -- atleast not high with me, Andreas, Doug et. al.
> being around.
> 
> However if you very strongly feel about it, we could leave the R packages where they are and continue maintaining
> them under R package umbrella.

I'd say any Debian Math member who is interested in R packages should
simply join pkg-r team and be done.

> Should you want more explanation, do let me know and I'll be happy to discuss.

Same for me.

Thanks again Doug

    Andreas.
 
> [1]: http://blends.debian.net/liststats/
> [2]: http://blends.debian.net/liststats/uploaders_r-pkg.png
> [3]: http://blends.debian.net/liststats/commitstat_pkg-r.png

[4] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/Developers


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