[Debian-med-packaging] Package ncbi-entrez-direct extremaly outdated

[Andreas Tille]

Hi,

On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 09:46:02PM -0400, Aaron M. Ucko wrote:
> Alan Daniel Weiss <medianeira at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > The package ncbi-entrez-direct is very outdated, will it receave any update
> > soon?
> 
> Thanks for your interest, and sorry for falling behind.  I will try to
> find time to catch up soon.

Thanks Aaron (I was about to ask the same).

Alan, as a general note:  Asking here is perfectly fine.  There is also
the option to do

     reportbug ncbi-entrez-direct

     Subject: New version available
     Severity: wishlist

If you file a bug report that way other interested users might have more
straightforward access to the information you exchange with the
maintainer than browsing the mailing list archive.
 
> >  Is there any way I can help? I have some knowledge in debian packaging.
> 
> I suppose the most helpful thing you could do would be to draft a
> current set of man pages -- I've been supplying them as a courtesy, and
> keep on having to update them per tool additions, renames, and usage
> changes.  If you're not familiar with groff syntax, even plain-text
> drafts would be helpful.

You can also try this script:

    https://salsa.debian.org/med-team/community/helper-scripts/blob/master/createmanpages

You need to edit the part in the middle (line 11-15), give a real PROGNAME
and "<optional description of the program>" and may be you replicate that
part for several programs.  The script should be called from the main
packaging dir (so that dpkg-parsechangelog can parse the version).

If there are more than say 5 manpages I tend to set MANDIR=debian/manpages

In most cases the result needs further editing, thought but at least you
have something to start with.

In some cases I also kept the result of that script in a separate branch
(see example[1]).  The advantage is that if there is a new upstream
version you can run the script again and create a diff which you might
be able to apply to your manual edits.  I do not remember that I really
did so but I think in more complex cases it is worth doing it.

Hope this helps

         Andreas.

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/med-team/roguenarok/tree/manpages

-- 
http://fam-tille.de