Bug#744011: ITP: cpl-plugin-muse -- ESO data reduction pipeline for MUSE
Hi Julian,
On 09.04.2014 19:11, Julian Taylor wrote:
> On 09.04.2014 09:45, Ole Streicher wrote:
>> Package: wnpp
>> * Package name : cpl-plugin-muse
>>
>> The software is not officially released yet. However, a prerelease is
>> available on the ESO FTP server. I intend to put this into experimental
>> to collect experiences until the official release is made.
>
> Debian is no place for pre-release software you found on some ftp server ...
I do not agree here. From the Debian Developer's reference [1]:
"The experimental distribution is a special distribution. It is not a
full distribution in the same sense as stable, testing and unstable are.
Instead, it is meant to be a temporary staging area for highly
experimental software where there's a good chance that the software
could break your system, or software that's just too unstable even for
the unstable distribution (but there is a reason to package it
nevertheless). Users who download and install packages from experimental
are expected to have been duly warned. In short, all bets are off for
the experimental distribution."
So, there *is* a designated place for early bird software, and I think
it is a good practice to do early releases, even if a software is not
complete yet [2].
Debian, and also Ubuntu, have a lot of pre-release software. Just think
of Wine, which was in a almost-always-crashing prerelease state for
years. I helped to have it in Debian to stabilize.
If we would limit Debian to released software, lots of software would
never have packaged. Just search for software releases with "git" or
"svn" in the version string.
> I urge you and your sponsors not to upload it. Every package increases
> the workload of the QA teams of Debian and its derivatives.
I would put cpl-plugin-muse to experimental until ESO publishes an
"official" release or I myself consider it stable enough for testing. I
don't see that this really increases the QA team workload. But the
opposite: The package will get some stabilization during its existence
in experimental; it will be packaged for different architectures, people
will punish it with clang etc. So, when the official version comes out,
it will already be a bit mature, actually *decreasing* the workload for
the QA team.
> Is there even any free data for MUSE available? So far I know the
> proprietary phase for ESO data is one year. Thats when we earliest have
> any use this software.
At least the Science Verification Data will be immediately available
[3], enabling users to gain some experiences with the instrument and its
pipeline.
Best regards
Ole
[1]
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/resources#experimental
[2]
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html
[3] https://www.eso.org/sci/activities/vltsv/svdoc.pdf
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