[Debichem-devel] Updating openbabel

[Andrius Merkys]

Dear Alex,

On 03/11/2018 08:23 PM, Alex Mestiashvili wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> The latest official release of openbabel is 2.4.1 which was released
> more then a year ago ( on 2016-10-10). The versions in stable and
> testing is 2.3.2 which is more then five years old.

according to https://packages.qa.debian.org/o/openbabel.html, the
current release of OpenBabel (2.4.1) is already in testing.

> If for whatever reason upstream doesn't want to create releases, do you
> think it is feasible to start uploading current snapshots? I can imagine
> a version like 2.4.90~beta1~gitc4c05d7c for example.

I suggest asking the upstream about the release, possibly on their
GitHub issue tracker. Maybe there is a major problem preventing the
release. Packing possibly unstable (in development) snapshot of
OpenBabel does not seem a good idea to me. I use OpenBabel a lot and
even the transition from 2.3.2 to 2.4.1 has been quite difficult to
adapt to (my colleagues and I are currently working on a manuscript
describing the problems we ran into). In short, perception of some of
the inorganic compounds has changed quite radically.

> Alternatively will it make sense to create openbabel-beta or
> openbabel-git packages with more frequent updates?

I have not seen such practice in Debian. However, I am relatively new here.

Best wishes,
Andrius

-- 
Andrius Merkys
Vilnius University Institute of Biotechnology, Saulėtekio al. 7, room V325
LT-10257 Vilnius, Lithuania