[Debian-science-sagemath] pari-sage or pari ?

[Julien Puydt]

Hi,

On 23/08/2016 09:00, jdemeyer at cage.ugent.be wrote:
>
>> No, I don't think you "control upstream", and the fact you're saying
>> this, shows that you don't understand what it means to work in the
>> broader FOSS community. The whole point is that you *do not* have
>> control over many of your dependencies. Gradually one learns how to
>> work *with* this fact instead of *against* it.
>
> I don't see it as *with* or *against* but mostly as a neutral thing: I
> propose a patch to upstream and then upstream decides what to do with
> it. If they do not want tot accept the patch, that is not my problem.

There is generally a reason why a patch is rejected. If things go too 
slowly, it's ok to add it to your package -- as long as it's documented 
(see http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep3/ ).

But that doesn't mean packaging something under a name where users will 
get lost if they get the same-named software from another distribution : 
we're packaging an upstream project, not making something out of the blue!

>> As a concrete example: you *do* have control over what code Sage
>> accepts. So, as I suggested below, you can delay accepting certain
>> patches into Sage, until upstream patches are applied - especially
>> minor ones (3 lines) that have a major outside effect (~15 failed
>> tests in Sage) - and encourage or require Sage contributors to first
>> upstream their patches. Or, you write your code against the current
>> bad upstream API, and add a TODO and a description of how to change it
>> to use the good one, when your patch finally gets accepted.
>
> That means releasing software with bugs for which there are known fixes,
> or with less features just because of upstream. Now *that* is not
> acceptabele fort me. So it's just a matter of priorities: my priority is
> making the best software.

Instead of releasing foo-3.14+0xdeadbeef-p257 in sage-the-distribution 
as if it were "foo", which it isn't because you considered upstream's 
offering unsuitable and patched it left and right, just release 
sagefoo-3.14 in sage-the-distribution.

For upstream : it's ok, you clearly both put yourself forward as 
responsible of the changes, and acknowledge what you do is only derived 
from their work.

For you: it's ok, you have what you consider the "best software".

For packagers : it's ok, we just have two upstreams, we'll make one 
package for each upstream, and we'll pay due respect to both.

There is an all-winner situation, and it's not hard to get it.

Snark on #debian-science