Robotics simulation package (orocos?, stage?)

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Michael,

On Tue, Sep 03, 2013 at 07:15:59AM -0500, Michael Janssen (Debian) wrote:
> I was aware of debian-science in general but not the Blend teams or
> the specific robotics based blend.

May be this is a missunderstanding:  Currently there is only a Debian
Science Blend featuring a dedicated Robotics task
 
> Some clarification if it hasn't been done already:
> Player is at version 3.0.2 now, the last stable release has been
> packaged for Debian and been in the archive for a while now.

Yes, this information can be drained from

  http://blends.alioth.debian.org/science/tasks/robotics#robot-player

> It's
> still used in many labs for controlling robots, as indicated by a
> recent article in IEEE Robotics & Automation magazine [2].

So if there is some publication about a package you should add this
information in the debian/upstream file (see
https://wiki.debian.org/UpstreamMetadata).  There is no real need to
upload a new package with this file - if you would decide to start
maintaining the package in Debian Science VCS (which I would strongly
recommend).  Feel free to ping me if you have any trouble with this.

> I've stopped using Player as part of my day-to-day robotics work,
> having my development move on to the ROS middleware[3] which I would
> love to get into Debian but is quite the moving target nowadays and a
> bit complicated, I could discuss that at length if people are
> interested.

IMHO this would be a relevant topic at this list.

> I don't think that the player package is out of date
> though.  The stage package definitely needs to be updated and
> uploaded.  I would be happy to join with Debian Science and move the
> packaging that I currently have to the VCS.

Great.

> I already use git and the
> upstream/pristine-tar/etc branches that are recommended so it should
> not be hard.  I also have the partially-done stage 4.0 packaging which
> shouldn't be too hard to update to 4.1.1 and get back into Debian
> again, I can focus on that for a couple hours this week.

Just keep us updated in case you might see some hurdles with the
VCS migration.

Kind regards

        Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de