[Debian-med-packaging] We need a global decision about R data in binary format, and stick to it.

[Bastien ROUCARIES]

Le 5 août 2013 15:42, "Paul Tagliamonte" <paultag at debian.org> a écrit :
>
> On Mon, Aug 05, 2013 at 02:13:15PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > We need to separate these two issues.
>
> Aye.
>
> IMVHO, this is the same as how we should treat images (I mean, for any
> data format, not just this one case of a pickled object) - if the image
> was a photo, clearly the .jpg or .png or whatever we get is the best way
> to communicate this data, but if the image was generated off an .svg,
> it should be distributed with it (and even rebuilt at build-time).

Could we made an exception for specially crafted image in order to exercice
buffer oveeflow ? (I think particularly art libpng ImageMagick)
>
> > One is the file format question.  It doesn't seem to me that there is
> > anything wrong with a binary format as the preferred form for
> > modification, in principle.  For a file which is typically edited
> > using R, including by upstream when they what to edit it, then there
> > is no problem.
>
> Sure. If this data wasn't collected off some scientific
> instrument or lovingly hand-made, I strongly believe that we should
> rebuild such objects at build time, and use those in the binary
> packages.
>
> > The other is the assertion that this particular case involves a
> > generated data table.  If this is the case then the source package
> > needs to contain the source code which generates the table - and,
> > really, it should regenerate the table during the build.  (The source
> > might be in the form of another R binary object.)
>
> I completely agree.
>
> > (Of course there is a third issue: it is probably not the best
> > engineering decision to use a binary save format rather than text
> > source code.  But that's not something the Debian maintainer
> > necessarily gets to choose and it's not a reason for an ftpmaster
> > reject.)
> >
> > > > The question asked by Paul is a recurrent question that comes each
> > > > time the FTP trainees rotate (basically once per release cycle,
> > > > because during the Freeze the FTP trainees find other exciting
> > > > tasks to do, and then do not seem to have much time to process NEW
> > > > anymore).
> > >
> > > This must mean many people who care deeply about this topic see this
as an
> > > issue.
> >
> > I don't think this is a helpful response to someone who is raising
> > what they see as a systematic problem.
>
> I'm sorry, Charles. Ian's right. That was a poor tone.
>
> >
> > Paul, would it be possible to update the ftpmaster assistant reference
> > materials to discuss R's binary files ?
>
> I would be happy to document what is and isn't OK with these files. I'll
> have to seek a bit of consensus from the rest of the ftp-team, but I
> think treating them as if they were any other data format should be
> fine.
>
> >
> > Ian.
>
> Thanks, Ian,
>   Paul
>
>
>
>
> --
>  .''`.  Paul Tagliamonte <paultag at debian.org>
> : :'  : Proud Debian Developer
> `. `'`  4096R / 8F04 9AD8 2C92 066C 7352  D28A 7B58 5B30 807C 2A87
>  `-     http://people.debian.org/~paultag
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