Hi, sorry for quoting myself, but may be the previously choosen subject might have hidden the problem a bit and after some investigation into Debian Science tasks files I came to the conclusion that they are not properly maintained. :-(
Just from watching the PTS mails what packages were updated and what were moved to testing I found a bunch of packages which are not registered in the tasks files. If we gain for some completion in presenting scientific software we simply fail to do so. On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 09:12:01PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: > > Do you know if the wiki will be updated to present ghkl in the right > > tasks ? > > The wiki is manually edited and I really hope it will NOT be updated. > Why should it? We should really stop manually editing those Wiki pages > because in contrary what people keep on telling you about Wikis: It just > is outdated. The tasks pages of the Blends web sentinel[1] will be > updated once a day and they contain all needed information about the > packages and are contain really the latest information. This statement is only true if we work together in registering packages in the tasks pages. To make it more clear what this means I would like to explain in short the phases of getting a package into Debian and how this is reflected in the blends stuff. 1. WNPP The best way to do would be to register the prospective package just now. There are examples in the tasks files and it is also explained in the docs[2]. An example which shows the effect of registering a prospective package can be sen for instance in the case of avl[3] Please note: The Long description has to be specified in the field "Pkg-Description" (NOT Description - see the bug in the subject of this mail). My personal policy is: I'm registering WNPPs for any package which is relevant for Debian Med, but my time does not allow to do the same for Debian Science. I sometimes just add the package and WNPP bug number to make sure the package will be there once it is uploaded (but it does not show up on the tasks pages by only specifying WNPP bug number) 2. Upload to new Once a package is in the new queue there is no extra information needed any more, because the new queue is parsed for packages mentioned in the tasks file. This can be seen after the next cron run in the example of libmadlib-dev[4] 3. Accepted by ftpmaster and upload to unstable At least at this point the package should be registered in the according tasks file and IMHO the easiest way would be if the maintainer would care for this. He just knows which task fits best and he watches the package most closely. 4. Package moves to testing Once a package is in testing it is registered as Recommended package (instead of only Suggested) after releasing the next version of Debian Science metapackages 5. Stable release Everybody who installs a science metapackage will learn about the registered packages (and might fail to realise those who are not registered). We are currently close to a stable release and probably have only one chance to fix the tasks files to be released in Squeeze. So maintainers of scientific packages please do your homework NOW. If you have no idea how to edit the tasks files (any DD has commit permissions to SVN) feel free to send me a patch or just write an e-mail to the list what you think should be changed in the tasks files. This is also a simple task for general readers of this mailing list who are not actually packaging software: Just browse the tasks pages[1] and watch out what packages might be missing. Note: I CAN NOT do this on my own and probably nobody can because I'm just lacking the knowledge to properly categorise those packages nor do I know all the packages inside Debian. So please provide some input - it is needed right now. Kind regards Andreas. > [1] http://blends.alioth.debian.org/science/tasks/ [2] http://blends.alioth.debian.org/blends/ch-sentinel.en.html#s-packageslist [3] http://blends.alioth.debian.org/science/tasks/engineering#avl [4] http://blends.alioth.debian.org/science/tasks/mathematics-dev#libmadlib-dev (not available at the time of writing) -- http://fam-tille.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-science-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100812202643.gb26...@an3as.eu