[Neurodebian-users] NeuroFedora packaging priorities

Yaroslav Halchenko debian at onerussian.com
Tue Nov 13 05:09:45 GMT 2018


On Sun, 11 Nov 2018, Morgan Hough wrote:

>    Hi Yarik/Michael/All,

Hi Morgan!  Long time no hear!

>    Ankur Sinha recently resurrected NeuroFedora and as he is a computational
>    neuroscientist, he has been focused on packaging NEST, Brian, etc. Igor
>    Gnatenko and I previous used a shared Google Doc with packages drawn from
>    NeuroDebian and the web that seemed to fit the criteria for inclusion but
>    it needs to be updated and before I did that I wanted to get in touch
>    about a couple of things. 
>    1) Is there still neurodebian-upstream list that would maybe be
>    appropriate for sharing info on common upstream packaging/licensing
>    problems?

With the migration of the "non-official" lists server in Debian, we
didn't bother moving -upstream and -devel since they were too low volume
thus I think ATM we have only neurodebian-users:
https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo

>    2) Is there an up-to-date list of the most widely installed packages from
>    NeuroDebian that we can use to prioritize our RPM packaging efforts with
>    sought after neuroimaging packages?

DataLad (and datalad-containers and datalad-neuroimaging) should go
first! ;)   would need fresh git-annex

on a (more) serious note: I guess checkout neurodebian popcon
http://neuro.debian.net/popcon/
so you could get e.g. those pkgs which we provide sorted by installation
count:

$> wget -O - -q http://neuro.debian.net/popcon/by_inst | grep -v 'Not in sid' | head -n 40
#Format
#   
#<name> is the package name;
#<inst> is the number of people who installed this package;
#<vote> is the number of people who use this package regularly;
#<old> is the number of people who installed, but don't use this package
#      regularly;
#<recent> is the number of people who upgraded this package recently;
#<no-files> is the number of people whose entry didn't contain enough
#           information (atime and ctime were 0).
#rank name                            inst  vote   old recent no-files (maintainer)
116   neurodebian-popularity-contest   932   742   146    44     0 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
224   python-pkg-resources             886   350   498    32     6 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
392   libjs-jquery                     812   134   251    34   393 (Debian Javascript Maintainers) 
404   init-system-helpers              806   392   393    19     2 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
455   python-six                       791   174   488   118    11 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
569   p7zip-full                       757   289   447    21     0 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
627   python3-pkg-resources            745   273   441    31     0 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
692   python-setuptools                730   250   442    31     7 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
722   python3-six                      723   126   524    69     4 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
815   python-tz                        698    58   611    28     1 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
1012  p7zip                            643   266   357    20     0 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
1027  python-urllib3                   639    66   512    56     5 (Neurodebian Maintainers)       
...

which shows that "most popular" aren't neuroscience ones, but you could
find the ones of interest below in there.


>    3) I would certainly be interested in learning about venues that have been
>    useful to present NeuroDebian to those outside the neuroimaging community
>    (FOSDEM, MozFest, etc.) as well as any interest in sharing booth
>    space/fees/costs/resources/labor for such opportunities. As a regular
>    neurodebian user myself, I would be very proud to represent NeuroDebian at
>    some of the most recent open source/open science conferences I have
>    attended.

Well -- we kinda suck at promotion outside of the field.  We are contemplating
though presence at the next FOSDEM but primarily not for NeuroDebian but for
DataLad project, which although with the roots in neuroscience, has little to
nothing neuroscience specific in it.  So we really need to promote it beyond
neuroimaging and neuroscience community.  

Promoting NeuroDebian outside of Neuroscience community might be a bit futile I
guess ;-)  After all it is NEURO Debian, even though we indeed package/support
some generic projects, accent is neuro- stuff, and those generic ones are
probably largely from python land, and that is where ppl often just resort to
conda.

>    Finally, I don't know what support NeuroDebian currently receives for
>    efforts outside neuroimaging research but if it is within my budget I
>    would match that to include NeuroFedora. Happy to do that through/with
>    INCF or however others see fit. I only want this to be a contribution and
>    net benefit in terms of relations with other projects such as NeuroDebian.
>    I would certainly like to learn how I can help NeuroFedora perhaps benefit
>    from research funding as well but as the new kid on the block mainly just
>    looking for advice to get started providing a service that others will
>    benefit from now.

Eh... we scored 3 "non awarded" proposals  to both NIH and NSF where we sought
for direct support/development for NeuroDebian.  It was always a matter of 1
reviewer saying smth like "oh well, this packaging stuff is not as important as
development of new methodologies!" which kills the average score.  So we gave
up looking for dedicated funds for sustained funding... ATM we sustain
NeuroDebian only via side-efforts within e.g. DataLad (funding is over),
ReproNim projects, and also thanks to support via consulting agreement with the
NIH funded NITRC.  Also placing packages under joint maintenance with Debian
Med and Science (and other) teams helps at times, although at other times
involves just fixing up packaging so it backports easily, but I think it mostly
helps ;-)


>    Thanks for your time, and as always, thank you for your inspiring project
>    and community.

Thank you Morgan for your kind words and good luck with NeuroFedora effort!
-- 
Yaroslav O. Halchenko
Center for Open Neuroscience     http://centerforopenneuroscience.org
Dartmouth College, 419 Moore Hall, Hinman Box 6207, Hanover, NH 03755
Phone: +1 (603) 646-9834                       Fax: +1 (603) 646-1419
WWW:   http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik        



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