Review of all the Debian Med debtags, and questions.

Charles Plessy plessy at debian.org
Wed Sep 17 15:04:00 UTC 2008


Greetings, Debtags maintainers and Debian Med developpers!


I reviewed all the Debtags of Debian Med (except latest mgltools); I
hope it gave me a better understanding of the system.
http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/todo.html?maint=debian-med-packaging%40lists.alioth.debian.org

First of all, I realised that Debtags is not a tree structure:
Field::Biology and Field::Biology:Molecular are two different tags. Also
I realised that subdivisions like this can be expressed by combinations
of simpler tags. For this reason, I would like to ask the removal of:

field::biology:bioinformatics
field::biology:molecular
field::biology:structural
field::medicine:imaging

Many of our programs work on biological sequences. I know we discussed
this before, but I really think that works-with:sequence would make
sense. In combination with field::biology, it would fully replace
field::biology:bioinformatics. I volunteer to do the transition by hand
if necessary. We currently have 84 field::biology:bioinformatics
packages.

I am undecided about what to do with the biology:: facet. We have no
plans to make programmatic use of it for the moment, and I did not use
it during my review, as it is quite parcellar. If nobody objects, I
would recommend its removal.

I acknowledge that the Debtags team is under constant pressure from
developpers who want their pet tag added to the list, and that
underpopulated instances are no excuse to create more of them. However,
I would like to suggest the following ones (in addition to to
works-with:sequence, that I strongly support instead of just suggest).

works-with::trees
  We would use this for our phylogeny packages, and many other tools not
  related to biology could use it. works-with::graphs could be an
  alternative, but potentially confusing.

use::simulatinng
  At least two of our packages would use it (adun.app, epigrass), and
  others like flightgear could definitely use it too. I think it would
  easily gain critical mass.

special::unmaintained
  We unfortunately package some programs that are Upstream-dead, as many
  other Debian packages are. Sadly, this tag could become very popular.

works-with::temperature
  We would have three candidate packages, but criticall mass would
  probably attained with sensors and weather packages.

The following ones are just ideas not really reflecting our needs:

made-of::data:examples, or role::example
role::translation
role::library (for languages like Perl, the current dichotomy is not relevant)
use::calculating
role::policy
  We actually have one such package, mipe (Minimal Information for PCR
  experiments), and soon our Group policy will be
  part of a package as well.
uitoolkit::xulrunner (in our case: biofox)

Lastly, I have the impression that there are some strong redundancies:

role::devel-lib and devel::library (actually, maybe the whole devel::
facet could be formulated with appropriate combination of other
Debtags). I have systematically used the first and ignored or even
deleted the second. (I can repair this if you disagree).

role::program always have a scope. Definition of scopes are such as they
can only apply to programs. If this facet is not broadened, maybe you
can consider to use role::{application|utility|suite} instead of the
scope facet.



Executive summary: please create works-with::sequence and delete
field::biology:{bioinformatics|molecular|structural} and
field::medecine:imaging.


Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan



More information about the Debtags-devel mailing list