[Debichem-devel] adding BALLview to debichem

[Andreas Tille]

On Tue, Feb 08, 2011 at 10:01:17PM +0100, Daniel Leidert wrote:
> BALLView is already available in Debian:
> http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/ball
> 
> It is maintained by the debian-med team.

We (the Debian Med team) is not particularly picky about *who* a package
maintains as long as it is *properly* maintained.
 
> > Furthermore, I was wondering what the steps are to include it in the
> > debichem pure blend distribution.
> 
> I'm not familiar with the blends concept. Michael?

In a Blend you just build an assembly of packages which is of interest
for a certain user group.  A user does not care about who the maintainer
of a certain package is (in the sense above he just assumes it is
properly maintained).  So while the Debian Med has a packaging team
which also invites (single) maintainers of applications to join it is
only to make sure that all packages for medical care and biomedical
research are properly maintained (which would not be the case without
the packaging team).

The Debian Med Blend just makes those packages easily *available* via
metapackages, gives proper documentation for the user on the sentinel
web pages and cares for issuing news through DPN channel etc.  There is
no reason at all for instance to exclude packages because they are
maintained by the DebiChem team (or any other team) because it is
comletely irrelevant for the user.  So for instance you will find
several applications listed at the Biology task page[1] (gamgi, garlic,
ghemical, etc.).

In the same manner it would make perfectly sense to browse the list of
packages on the Biology page[1] and pick those which are interesting for
chemists as well (IMHO there are several of them) and list them in a
proper task of DebiChem.  (I'm actually astonished that you have not
yet done this. :-))  I'd love to support this attempt if any technical
help might be needed.

> > In the future I hope to contribute more to the debichem project, for I
> > think this can be very valuable for the scientific community.
> 
> Any help is appreciated. Here is a list of all packages we currently
> maintain:
 
To come back to the maintaining part:  I'd consider it a reasonable
action to "pull" the uploaders of more chemical than biological
applications from Debian Med to DebiChem if it turns out that there
might be better synergies than in a team which is dominated by
biologists.  Just contact them (in direct mail or via Debian Med list
which is fine as well IMHO).
 
Kind regards

    Andreas.

[1] http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/tasks/bio

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