Bug#216877: Situation of astronomical packages, ITA offer and proposed RFC
Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña wrote:
> There has been one volunteer (it's just not in the BTS info):
> Francisco García <franciscomanuel.garcia@hispalinux.es>
> (in CC)
Ah, OK. I forwarded him a copy of my original email, along with an
offer of help if he would like it. Also CC-ing him on this email.
I have just a few comments on your comments:
>> c) generate symlinks at install time, but then the program is subject
>> to the conditions (5a) and (5b) below in order to avoid broken
>> symlinks.
>
> Notice that if you removed the startdata stuff but installed a package that
> was using c) then you would end up with a program that does not work. I
> think that c) should be ruled out.
I agree, it seemed probably unnecessary anyway.
> Some other programs use modified versions of the star data catalogues but
> do not provide preprocessors to regenerate the data IIRC.
Well, if it's not too hard to write such a preprocessor to massage the
data into that program's preferred form, it ought to be done. If it
would be too difficult (for instance, if upstream has modified the data
file by hand to his liking), then I suppose the modified data file must
continue to be distributed in the same package as the program (when
permitted, of course, recalling bug # 225002).
>> b) rerun the preprocessing whenever the program or any of the data
>> files it can use are installed or removed. This means that the
>> maintainer of the program will need to ask the maintainer of the
>> data files to include preprocessing hooks in their postinst/prerm
>> scripts. A preprocessed data file should be deleted when the
>> corresponding star data package is uninstalled. ALL preprocessed
>> data files for that program should be removed when the program is
>> uninstalled. This is similar to how all the mozilla-related
>> packages call "update-mozilla-chrome" on postinst or prerm.
>
> Why remove the stardata if you have already preprocessed it? I don't think
> that's really necessary.
It is probably not necessary, but it seems like what an admin would
expect. That is, if he uninstalls "gliese", then he probably no longer
wants the version of the Gliese catalogue modified for starplot, and
expects that it also would be removed. Just IMO.
> However, there is a reason for doing it in the
> stardata catalogues instead of doing it in the programs themselves: it's
> necessary in order to be able to install the stardata catalogue after the
> program has been installed (and thus, avoid Pre-Depends:)
Yes, I agree. That was what I intended to mean in the following
sentence (I apologize that it was unclear) - "This means that the
maintainer of the program will need to ask the maintainer of the data
files to include preprocessing hooks in their postinst/prerm scripts."
> I'm not sure if /usr/share is better than /var/lib.
So you prefer /var/lib?
> So out of 8 packages: 4 include Yale, and 3 include the Hipparcos data set,
> only one (starplot) does not provide any data itself. Notice that only two
> (starplot/spacechar) can use stardata catalogues installed similarly to how
> the 'yale' and 'gliese' packages provide them, even though these packages
> have been available for over three years now!
Thanks for this info.
I'll send you a new draft of the astro-policy RFC today or tomorrow.
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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