Bug#252101: ITP: gromacs -- versatile package to perform molecular dynamics
On Sun, 6 Nov 2005, Nicholas Breen wrote:
1. Did you consider putting the changes you do to upstream into seperate
patches, maintained in a debian/patches directory via a patch-system
like dpatch or quilt?
Didn't seem necessary. Nearly the entire set of patches relates to
documentation changes or additions that I'm pushing upstream, which should
shrink the non-debian-specific components of the diff to nearly nothing
if they're accepted.
Well, perhaps dpatch just helps you to maintain your own stuff so perhaps
you should consider it anyway.
The reason for the Debian-specific name is to make it blindingly obvious
that it's a change from upstream. Because scientific software demands
reproducibility, the authors prefer it if all changes from the upstream
source are clearly marked;
You are right that it should be clearly marked, but this should be
done in a README.Debian file or somewhere else in the documentation and
not really in a version number change.
Splitting off -doc packages is always something of a judgment call
between space efficiency and Packages.gz bloat.
I'm personally a very big friend of splitting up large documentation from
the binary package.
The total of
/usr/share/doc/gromacs and /usr/share/gromacs/tutor (the tutorial files)
is only 4.3MB, out of a total installed size of ~16MB. Since this isn't
that much of a savings, I decided it wasn't worth splitting off a
separate -doc package.
Well, I would consider every documentation above 0,5MB worth splitting
up and in your case it is 25% which is definitely worth the effort.
Especially if you think of binary packages for 12 architectures that copy
architecture independant stuff into their mirrors.
I am certainly amenable to team maintenance, and am greatly interested in
assisting with other chemistry software. I'm not a DD, and do need a
sponsor for the package. I've asked Andreas Tille (cc:'d on this message)
already, but he sounds fairly busy at the moment -- perhaps the two of you
could discuss that?
I would prefer if somebody else would take over the sponsoring but would
be serve as a fallback if nobody steps in.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
Wenn durch das Land die Grippe saust, es meiner ganzen Sippe graust.
http://fam-tille.de
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