[Pkg-scicomp-devel] Debian package for Scotch

[François PELLEGRINI]

Re Christophe,
Hello all,

First, I will post here my answer to Ondrej, which I forgot to
post to the list. Here it is :

-----------
Ondrej Certik wrote:
> > Absolutely! Please email Christophe your alioth account, he'll add you
> > to our group
> > and you can fix/improve the package in our svn. Then ask here for the
> > approval (or ask before you commit if you do some big changes)
> > and someone will upload it if all is ok.

Err, I must have explained it wrong. Although being
very supportive of the libre software movement,  ;-)
I do not have time to dig into the arcanes of
Debian package maintainment, and therefore I
would do more harm than good in meddling with
your packaging procedures. You are the experts in
that.

Instead, what I can bring you as the software
author is to provide you with features or structural
changes in future releases that can ease your job.
Do a wishlist and I will see what I can do. It will
be quite limited ; for instance, in spite of all of
my good will, I have never been able to move to
autoconf, as I could not invest the time to understand
its functions. But if something is really a problem
for you, we can talk about it.
------------

Christophe Prud'homme wrote:
> thank you for your email. I did the package some time ago and I hope
> it is faithful to your work.

I have not checked, but I hope it is.    ;-)

>  I meant to contact you some time ago to tell you about scotch in
> Debian but fail to do so.

No problem.

> The main idea behind packaging scotch is to provide and promote a
> replacement for metis/parmetis (which is is non-free)

OK. My motivations are a bit different. See below.

> the fact that you provide the scotchmetis interface is a very good
> thing. Unfoirtunately some functions are missing to be able to use
> scotch as a full replacement.
> for example it would be very nice  to have the full  "metis" interface
>  for suitesparse supported by scotch.

The point is that I do not plan to replace all of the
routines of the MeTiS library. As a researcher, I do things
only if they provide an improvement over the state of the
art. This is why I do Scotch : because I think the algorithms
I implement are better than the ones of MeTiS.  ;-)

Therefore, I cannot invest time in just recoding pieces of
code that bring no added value to the taxpayers who fund me.
For instance, I do not plan to recode the "mesh2dual" or
"mesh2nodal" routines of MeTiS, because there is no scientific
added value for me to do that. I could do it as a hobby, but
my involvment in the libre software community is already taking
me much time, on other issues...   :-)

I got in touch with your group now because in the Scotch 5.0.6
version that I am about to release, I have tried to comply more
to the GNU packaging standards : now, the files go to separate
"./bin", "./include" and "./lib" subdirectories, and I am also
writing man pages for the binaries. The "make install" target
sends files to distinct subdirectories relative to the $prefix
variable. I can provide you with a tarball of it if you want,
prior to its upcoming release.

I'd like to be able to do something better in term of porting,
such as basing on autoconf and automake, but I have not been
able to invest too much in it, so its arcanes are much too
obscure for me at the time being...  :-(

> You are most welcome to join the group (list and project). As Ondrej
> mentionned,  let me know your login name and I will add you to the
> project.

I am already overworked and over-emailed, so I think I'd better
say no...     :-)

> PS: I work at the Lab. Jean Kuntzmann in Grenoble. my main interest is
> scientific computing and more specifically the numerical solution of
> PDEs

OK. A colleague, then.    ;-)

A+,



				f.p.