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--- Olivier Fisette <ribosome@g.o> wrote: |
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|
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> Familiarity with one or more scientific packages already in |
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> Portage, and willfulness to maintain them up-to-date and |
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> bug-free would be a plus. We currently have no maintainer for |
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> important packages such as GNU Octave, Maxima or the Staden |
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> Package. A problem I have with scientific software is that I |
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> find it hard to test when it applies to a field I am not |
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> familiar with. This is probably the case with everybody in the |
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> sci herd. ;-) |
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|
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I have some familiarity with Maxima, in fact I was mixed up with the |
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original creation of that ebuild (although I was not responsible for |
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the last complex ebuild dependancy magic that finally made it work.) I |
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have played a minor role in the development of Maxima itself (some |
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documentation work and bug finding, primarily). I don't know nearly |
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enough about the details of ebuilds to offer comprehensive advice, but |
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I can say with confidence that the ebuilds for various lisps Maxima |
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uses are going to outpace the release schedule for Maxima, so either |
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someone needs to keep creating patches to Maxima or preserve the older |
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lisps with exact version dependancies for a static Maxima to keep |
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working. If the better idea is judged to be patch from cvs as needed, |
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I would advise waiting for 5.9.2 before starting that, since there are |
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a LOT of patches since 5.9.1. (As is, it would be simplier to just use |
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a cvs tarball instead.) |
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|
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I would also advise that some more focus be turned on Axiom, which is a |
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competitor to Maxima and a very powerful program indeed - in some |
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respects it is unique among computer algebra systems. It's design |
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lends some hope to the idea of systematically incorporating new |
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mathematical abilities into it, which is a big deal. It retains deep |
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awareness of things like mathematical types, and unlike Maxima is much |
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more fully documented :-/. A cvs ebuild exists and works, with some |
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edits of the final axiom script produced, but I would like to see a |
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stable one too. |
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|
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Unfortunately, I have no significant familiarity with Octave's build |
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process, having used it only once or twice for minor applications. |
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|
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> Since we have time constraints ourselves, we understand potential |
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> recruits may only have a few hours during one day of the week to |
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> do Gentoo development, and that is Ok. However, if you don't |
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> think you will be able to dedicate at least an hour or two a |
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> week on average, I am not sure it would be profitable to invest |
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> time and efforts in the mentoring process. |
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|
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Perhaps we could have a "support team" behind someone with official |
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Gentoo developer status - people could point out significant ebuilds |
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with most logic in place to the developer, help work out quirks in the |
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programs/ebuilds, and generally speed things up? Certainly the |
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developer would bear final responsibility but this way those of us with |
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five hours every month or so could help out too, particularly for |
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specialty packages. (BTY, if some genius could figure out brl-cad I |
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would be grateful - it's going to take me a year at this point :-/.) |
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|
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There are a fair number of at least partial ebuilds for useful |
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scientific software stuck in bugzilla - brl-cad and acl2 come |
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immediately to mind, and I know there are others. Plus a fair number |
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that don't have ebuilds where it would be useful to have them. Gentoo |
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is alreay one of the best for scientific software, due to compiling |
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things being easy and our ebuild pool, but we could definitely do |
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better. |
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|
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My machine is probably a poor test machine - what gentoo environment |
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would we need to maintain? |
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|
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Cheers, |
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CY |
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|
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____________________________________________________ |
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Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page |
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http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs |
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|
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-- |
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