[Pkg-scicomp-devel] Maintainers of scientific applications: Please maintain tasks files! (Was: Bug#592701: science-statistics: typo in package description)

[Andreas Tille]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 11:40:16AM +0200, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> > all.  However, your e-mail is in principle sufficient to fullfill my
> > cry for help (probably pronounced a bit to engaged yesterday - sorry
> > if I sounded to harsh).
> 
> That is a lot to read...

Yes, but parts of it might suffice (or as I said using me as a proxy for
editing the tasks files if you just know that you should give a ping
here).

> Ok, thanks. I guess I should update the description sometimes... that comes
> directly from the control file?

The English description, yes.  The translation (I guess you might read the
German locale) comes from DDTP translations.

> I see there is no website mentioned, does
> this also come from the control file?
> http://glx.sourceforge.net/

Yes.  You should set a Homepage field in your control file.  (Have you
noticed that these pages are working as a QA means ;-))

> > The merge of the two science projects will definitely not come because
> > Sylvestre has suggested it.  His offer to do the move is really brave -
> > but I guess he needs at least some kind of confirmation "Yes, I'm fine
> > if you just do it."  You probably have observed cases in the past where
> > a maintainer was defeating others from touching his packages.
> 
> Oh, but this package is MINE... ;-)
> No, I am fine with it, but I just know enough svn to check in my changes. I
> did not get svn-buildpackage to work

Me too, but I do the commits manually and just ignore svn-buildpackage ...

> (thats one of the reasons I prefer bzr)
> and I do not want to experiment to move the svn directory from pkg-scicomp
> to pkg-science. I just want to use the version control, not write a thesis
> about it.

Fine.

> Yes, I have seen it there, thanks. Just as I said, it is better than
> gnuplot, it comes before ;-)

I hope the fact that it is now in the Blends task will increase its
popcon stats to reflect this feature. ;-)
  
> > Adding DebTags to your packages is also a very good idea.  The tasks
> > pages support this by providing a link in case a package is not yet
> > DebTagged.  You can read more about DebTags here[4] and you can
> > effectively use the DebTags database by using axi-cache (the successor
> > of ept-cache), a nifty tool which is some kind of so perfectly hidden
> > that no user does it know (as well as the Blends stuff obviosely).
> 
> I thought the tag would add it to the tasks, why does it have to be done
> twice?

DebTags reflect more features than just putting it into a certain workfield.
The Debian Junior Blend did some experiments with mapping tasks and DebTags
directly but there was not so much success.  That's a long story.  If you
are interested (I mean really interested) you might bring this up on
debian-blends at l.d.o.  I'm constantly thinking about how we can connect
DebTags and Blends better but have not yet found a really good solution.
  
> I will have a look. There are many screenshots in the glx examples page, I
> don't know which to pick... can I upload two?

The doc on screenshots.debian.net is really short. ;-))
The very short answer is: You can upload as much as you want.

Only one is directly shown at the tasks page and I would say a that the
screenshot which is displayed at the tasks page is "randomly" choosen
(which means I just pick one from a list and have no real control which
one this is - probably the first uploaded but no guarantee).  However,
the user gets the information if there are more than one screenshots
available.
 
> > (Git or SVN at your preference, no bzr).  Subscribing to the maintainers
> > list (prehaps the commit list) as well as to the discussion list[6]
> > makes sense.  That's all.
> 
> And even more to read... I think the package that was suggested for the move
> is xmds.
> http://packages.qa.debian.org/x/xmds.html
> That should probably be added to the tasks as well, but I am not quite sure
> where. It solves differential equations, so probably math. There are many
> examples for physics, engineering, chemistry. So it could be in those tasks
> as well?

I simply added xmds to mathematics.  If anybody else thinks it should be
in any further task, please rise your voice here.
 
Thanks for your input

     Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de