Maintainers of scientific applications: Please maintain tasks files! (Was: Bug#592701: science-statistics: typo in package description)

[Andreas Tille]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 12:09:49AM +0200, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> 
> I hope you don't kill me either... I have not yet played with tags and
> tasks, and did not see any links to relevant documentation in your email.

I just had the impression that I have given way to many hints to the
relevant Blends doc[1] that people become bored about this.  Obviosely
this is not the case and there is in fact no real need if you read this
all.  However, your e-mail is in principle sufficient to fullfill my
cry for help (probably pronounced a bit to engaged yesterday - sorry
if I sounded to harsh).
 
> I maintain GLE,

I have added it to the viewing task in SVN[2] - so this was basically
the information I needed from you as a maintainer of a package with
relevance for scientific work.  You probably could have added the

   Depends: gle-graphics

yourself ... but if nobody has pointed you to the docs it is idefinitely
not your fault (and I'll keep on bothering you all with this stuff ;-)).

> which is still in pkg-scicomp and I guess it should be moved
> to debian-science (this has been suggested before for this or some other
> package I (co)maintain. Sombody offered to do it).

The merge of the two science projects will definitely not come because
Sylvestre has suggested it.  His offer to do the move is really brave -
but I guess he needs at least some kind of confirmation "Yes, I'm fine
if you just do it."  You probably have observed cases in the past where
a maintainer was defeating others from touching his packages.
 
> http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gle-graphics.html
> 
> This package fits into the viewing task, as it is similar to gnuplot, grace,
> gri, only better (since I have been using it for 15+ years ;-)
> 
> How do I add it to the task?

As I said I've just done it and I'm volunteering to add other packages
after a notice because it is quite simple and does not really need much
time.  I just started the job to render the Debian Science tasks
manually in addition to the cron job to let you all see the effect of
this change and thus you should find your package at the science viewing
task page[3] in a short time.

> I just found this page:
> http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/edit.html?pkg=gle-graphics
> Should I add the use::viewing tag? What does this button... hmm

Adding DebTags to your packages is also a very good idea.  The tasks
pages support this by providing a link in case a package is not yet
DebTagged.  You can read more about DebTags here[4] and you can
effectively use the DebTags database by using axi-cache (the successor
of ept-cache), a nifty tool which is some kind of so perfectly hidden
that no user does it know (as well as the Blends stuff obviosely).

> Anything else?

Once you are navigating to the gle-graphics section on[3] you will
notice that in contrast to other packages gle-graphics has no
screenshot.  Just follow the according link and add a screenshot.
Blends is also about Quality Assurance.  I really hope this stuff
makes sense to you (and you will spreed the word ;-)!)
 
> And how will the package move from pkg-scicomp to science? I wouldn't mind
> switching to bzr during this move...

I guess this was explained before but I think the Draft Debian Science
Policy[5] will answer this question.  In short:

  Maintainer: Debian Science Team <debian-science-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org>
  Uploaders: <you>[, <other maintainer>]

  Vcs-Git: git://git.debian.org/?p=debian-science/gle-graphics.git   OR
  Vcs-Svn: svn://svn.debian.org/svn/debian-science/packages/gle-graphics/trunk/

(Git or SVN at your preference, no bzr).  Subscribing to the maintainers
list (prehaps the commit list) as well as to the discussion list[6]
makes sense.  That's all.

Kind regards

        Andreas.

[1] http://blends.alioth.debian.org/blends
[2] http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/blends/projects/science/trunk/debian-science/tasks/
[3] http://blends.alioth.debian.org/science/tasks/viewing
[4] http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/
[5] http://debian-science.alioth.debian.org/debian-science-policy.html
[6] http://lists.debian.org/debian-science

-- 
http://fam-tille.de