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> > Who will decide which packages are first-class citizens and which are not? |
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> > What are the criteria? |
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> |
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> I suggested a few. |
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> - Is a developer willing to commit to maintaining it? |
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> - Is it expected to be fairly popular, or is it extremely specific? |
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> - (for apps already in the tree) Is it unmaintained? Should it be |
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> moved to an overlay? |
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The first criteria is naturally a prerequisite for any package. But I also share the |
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concerns raised by Andrey. |
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Somehow, I feel, personally, that the sci-packages should constitute an exception |
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from the general rules regarding overlays. I mean that when a person chooses to use |
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something from, say, Xfce overlay, the use of an overlay is rather natural and |
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pleasant, but when a person is "forced" to use an overlay in order to write a Ph.D |
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thesis, the use of an overlay can be far from pleasant. In my opinion overlays can |
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not escape additional concerns regarding quality and trust, and these concerns are |
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much more strongly felt when we are dealing with scientific packages. Again the |
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keyword may just be the perception. |
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|
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And as Sébastien mentioned, this is an area in which the build process and runtime |
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behavior should be rock solid, the former preferably being accompanied by as many |
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tests as is possible. Do not get me wrong: all packages that I have used from the |
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sci-overlay have been high-quality ones, but for the mentioned reasons I see no |
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point in having an overlay that possibly (would? will?) contain unmaintained ebuilds |
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with little or no testing. Again I see this as an issue specifically related to the |
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scientific packages. |
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|
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Also, given that we are dealing with scientific software, the minority of the |
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packages will fall under the "generic and popular" category, while the rest will |
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surely be more or less specific. I see that we have eleven sci-categories in the |
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main tree. Most likely packages in sci-electronics will be extremely specific for |
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people doing work with packages in the sci-geosciences category. I doubt that |
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popularity is such a good criteria in choosing which scientific packages deserve to |
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be in the main tree. I would rather like to ask what kind of internal representation |
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the sci team has? Are the staffing needs especially bad in some areas? |
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Again these were just small and perhaps irrelevant opinions from an user of the |
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scientific packages. |
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|
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Thanks, |
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|
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Jukka Ruohonen. |
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|
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-- |
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