Re: Bug#513296: debian-science: Please add science-all meta-package

[Andreas Tille]

[debian-custom in CC because it is strongly related]

On Wed, 28 Jan 2009, Daniel Baumann wrote:

> it would be nice if you could add a science-all meta-package that
> depends on all science-* meta packages. That would make live-cd building
> a bit easier in future, as nobody would need to 'maintain' the package
> list anymore.

Thanks for the interesting idea.

I have some comments on the implementation which might be worth some
thoughts.

  1. Simple but ugly solution: Just adding a task 'all' to the currently
     existing tasks and add all meta packages just in the science source
     package.

     Effect regarding package creation:
      - Closes the bug.  Should work so far for science.  Has no effect
        to other Blends (which might like to build Live-CDs as well).

     Effect regarding tasks pages:
      - A little bit "strange" item "All" would be created.  Users might
        stumble upon this.
      - It might become better if I finish my plan to implement "Meta-Depends"
        which is intended to help science-biology and science-geography
        to reasonable include metapackage information from other Blends
        (rather resolving the dependencies of the metapackage than including
        the metapackage itself which is basically useless in the context
        of the tasks pages in contrast to installing the metapackage).
      - I might think about excluding this task from the tasks page
        generation but I do not like to work around a problem I introduced
        myself formerly

     Effect regarding bugs pages:
      - Makes no real sense, rather disturbing than really helpful.

     Effect on http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=debian-science-maintainers@...&ordering=3:
      - Makes no sense at all

  2. Solution for all Blends:  Let the all metapackage be generated for
     any Blend (bug should be reassigned to blends-dev package which is
     sitting in NEW since 4/1/2009 :-( - reassigning to cdd-dev would
     work as bug target as well).

     Effect regarding package creation:
      - Closes the bug.  Works for all Blends.  Might have the side
        effect that some Blends maintainers do not like it but for
        this case we might make this function optional -> this topic
        has to be discussed.

     Effect regarding tasks pages:
      - No "strange" effect as discussed above.
      - Option: We might think about a page featuring all dependencies.
        I would not really like this option for Debian Med but there
        are chances that somebody might like it (for instance as Live CD
        index or something like this).  This option could be discussed.
        I'd be willing to implement this as optional feature if somebody
        might ask for it.

     Effect regarding bugs pages:
      - No effect and thus not distrubing as the simple solution above.

     Effect on http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=debian-science-maintainers@...&ordering=3:
      - No effect -> good.

So I prefer to implement the solution in the Blends scope to avoid
unwanted side effects and make the wanted feature available for more
people in one rush.

What do you think?

Kind regards

          Andreas.

--
http://fam-tille.de


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[Chris Walker-2]

Andreas Tille <tillea@...> writes:

> [debian-custom in CC because it is strongly related]
>
> On Wed, 28 Jan 2009, Daniel Baumann wrote:
>
> > it would be nice if you could add a science-all meta-package that
> > depends on all science-* meta packages. That would make live-cd building
> > a bit easier in future, as nobody would need to 'maintain' the package
> > list anymore.
>
> Thanks for the interesting idea.
>
> I have some comments on the implementation which might be worth some
> thoughts.
>
>   1. Simple but ugly solution: Just adding a task 'all' to the currently
>      existing tasks and add all meta packages just in the science source
>      package.

Unless the science metapackages will be uploaded again for lenny, this
is moot for the current release.

>
>      Effect regarding package creation:
>       - Closes the bug.  Should work so far for science.  Has no effect
>         to other Blends (which might like to build Live-CDs as well).

I think that the automatic solution proposed below is better - but
that you should implement this as a temporary workaround until someone
gets around to implementing the better solution. This gets the problem
off Daniel's back and onto ours - and it is easier for us to do the
work too.


> So I prefer to implement the solution in the Blends scope to avoid
> unwanted side effects and make the wanted feature available for more
> people in one rush.
>
> What do you think?
>

Unless you plan to release a new version of the science packages in
time for lenny, then there is no immediate hurry, but we should bear
the pain rather than Daniel.

Chris


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[Andreas Tille]

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009, Chris Walker wrote:

>>   1. Simple but ugly solution: Just adding a task 'all' to the currently
>>      existing tasks and add all meta packages just in the science source
>>      package.
>
> Unless the science metapackages will be uploaded again for lenny, this
> is moot for the current release.

Yes.  BTW - I plan an upload to experimental which builds against the
new blends-dev package (also in experimental).  In principle there should
not much problems occure - but the additional metapackages are requiring
editing the override file so we will face a delay for the availability
anyway and I would like to make a "controled move" from all blends
metapackages at the same time and so I use experimental as "sandbox" for
this first.  I also would like to wait for the Lenny release before
introducing massive changes.

>>      Effect regarding package creation:
>>       - Closes the bug.  Should work so far for science.  Has no effect
>>         to other Blends (which might like to build Live-CDs as well).
>
> I think that the automatic solution proposed below is better - but
> that you should implement this as a temporary workaround until someone
> gets around to implementing the better solution. This gets the problem
> off Daniel's back and onto ours - and it is easier for us to do the
> work too.

Well, I'm not fully convinced but if Daniel considers the problem as
really urgent I would consider a compromise.  On the other hand a simple

$ ls tasks | awk '{ print "science-"$1 }'
science-astronomy
science-astronomy-dev
science-biology
science-chemistry
science-dataacquisition
science-electronics
science-engineering
science-engineering-dev
science-geography
science-imageanalysis
science-linguistics
science-mathematics
science-mathematics-dev
science-numericalcomputation
science-physics
science-robotics
science-statistics
science-typesetting
science-viewing

gives you all science metapackage names and if you include the
output in the live CD building config (or we base a very simple
script which provides the really needed form) a temporary solution
can be found as well.

> Unless you plan to release a new version of the science packages in
> time for lenny,

I would be really stupid if I would have such plans ... ;-))

> then there is no immediate hurry, but we should bear
> the pain rather than Daniel.

Sure.  I would like to care for means that reduces Daniels pain
to a minimum.  We should just decide which means are really reasonable.

Kind regards

           Andreas.

--
http://fam-tille.de


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