RFS: tinarng

[Torquil Macdonald Sørensen]

Hi all!

My first post to this list. I've just started to-com-maintain mpich2, and this 
is a request for sponsorship of a pseudo-random number generator library for 
parallel computations, called TRNG. The name of the Debian source package is 
tinarng, as explained below.

It was suggested to me to post an RFS here to the Debian Science team.

tinarng is a very nice C++ parallel pseudo-random number generator library that 
I use within my MPICH2 parallel computer programs on Debian Sid AMD64. The 
simulations use Monte Carlo methods, so quality random number generation is 
essential.

I'd like to maintain this very nice library as a Debian package, and for that I 
need upload sponsorship. Parallel computing is becoming more and more 
commonplace as is of course well-known on this list. This is a very easy-to-use 
and high-quality parallel pseudo RNG, and is actively maintained upstream.

Some details:

1) Name of Debian source package: tinarng. It will create the following binary 
Debian packages: libtinarng4-0, libtinarng-dev, libtinarng-dbg, libtinarng-doc. 
The doc-package contains a very comprehensive high-quality 128-page PDF manual.

2) The license is BSD (3-clause)

3) Short description:

Tina's (pseudo) Random Number Generator Library

4) Long description (taken from the upstream TRNG description):

Tina's Random Number Generator Library (TRNG) is a state of
the art C++ pseudo-random number generator library for
sequential and parallel Monte Carlo simulations. Its design
principles are based on a proposal for an extensible random
number generator facility, that will be part of the random
number generator facility of the forthcoming revision of
the C++ standard.

5) Can be obtained from mentors.debian.net:

http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/t/tinarng

Notes: I used a lintian override. It has to do with a difference between the 
binary library package and the so-name of the library file. This happens because 
I have agreed (upon suggestion from Debian developer ) to not use the upstream 
'trng' as package name, since it is a common abbreviation for "True Random 
Number Generator". Thus libtinarng4-0 will contain the library 
libtrng4.so.0.0.0, which is the source of lintian's complaint (lintian want's me 
to call the binary package libtrng4-0).

Ref: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=624764

6) Upstream URL: http://developer.berlios.de/projects/trng

7) PDF manual URL, for those that want to take a peek before downloading the 
package: http://trng.berlios.de/trng.pdf

8) Uploading it to Debian will close the ITP bug #626087 that I just filed 
today, since I had to close the previous ITP which was under the now discarded 
source package name 'trng'

9) I've already fixed a handful of problems explained to me on the 
debian-mentors email list.

10) I'm happy to get more suggestions on how to improve the package :-)

Best regards
Torquil Sørensen