[Debichem-devel] Please maintain DebiChem tasks files [Was: Bug#693800: ITP: tandem-mass -- mass spectrometry software for protein identification]

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Michael,

On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 01:19:06AM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 03, 2013 at 02:02:37PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > you might know (or at least assume) that I'm closely watching ITPs and
> > whether the packages finally make their way into the relevant tasks.
> > The one below was even uploaded to Debian but not yet included into any
> > of the DebiChem tasks ... but should.
>  
> That's because the tasks files haven't been updated for wheezy yet -
> which we talked about, like, yesterday?

Surely I remember that we talked about maintaining tasks files.  I
personally do this not on a "released-based" schedule but once a new
package is added.  At least for my workflow this seems to be safer to
make sure I will not forget anything.
 
> > I have no idea whether you are aware that you can even
> > 
> >     Depends: not_yet_uploaded_file_in_vcs
> > 
> > so actually in most cases after issuing an ITP bug it makes sense to
> > include the package into a task (no, we do not *yet* parse ITP bugs,
> > but I simply assume that the package might be at this time in VCS or
> > at least will show up there soonish.)  This helps drastically to not
> > forget maintaining the tasks files.
> 
> I personally do not see the point in adding ITP'd packages to tasks
> right away that might not get uploaded for a while due to various
> reasons.  So I will not do it, but if others prefer to have their ITP'd
> packages added, we can do that of course.

Feel free to handle this according your personal preference.  I just
wanted to mention the possibility.  We have very good experience with
showing the status in VCS like for instance here:

    http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/tasks/bio#pkgvcs-debs

This helps avoiding duplicate work (because people are trained to check
here first), helps people for finding simple targets for continuing /
testing some work and is a general source of information.  And (which is
what I intended to say in my mail) - it is simple because you only need
to edit the tasks file once and be done even if the package is finally
uploaded.
 
> > I have not yet checked other chemestry relevant ITPs or whether all
> > packages relevant for DebiChem are mentioned in the tasks files but I
> > would like to explicitely mention that there is the chance to get
> > changes een into Wheezy as I informed the release team about the
> > to be expected changes[1].
> > 
> > It even might be possible to add new tasks that might be missing
> > currently however, I would like to add a *big* *warning* *against*
> > *renaming* of any metapackage compared to the current metapackages
> > in testing.  Currently the blends-dev framework does not have some
> > means to add the needed "Replaces/Conflicts/Provides" magic that
> > would be needed - so I was falling into this trap once and I only
> > can recommend to stay away from any renamings for now.
>  
> That's a bummer.  You made up names and uploaded the DebiChem tasks
> initially (which was great of course), however, I have began to think
> that the initial classifications and naming wasn't all that great for
> all tasks.
> 
> I will have to revert quite a bit of changes from subversion then as I
> split up tasks a while ago.  What about leaving the original name as a
> meta-metapackage and just make them depending on the new name(s)?

That will work somehow.  I admit I only became aware about this issue
once we were fallen into this trap after renaming.  This needs to
be changed in blends-dev however, it is way to late for wheezy.
 
Kind regards

      Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de