[DebianGIS-dev] Ping: Changes in Debian GIS Blend stuff

[Andreas Tille]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 06:13:01PM -0700, Hamish wrote:
> > my mail[1] to pkg-grass-devel about more or less highjacking
> > their (orphaned) prepearation for metapackages in the Blends
> > style did not triggered any response.
> 
> sorry, I missed the earlier email.

Probably not only you.  I noticed that Petter was updating the
tasks/workstation file 8 days ago.  Petter, do you see any reasonable
was to coordinate.  As I wrote: I do not really wanted to highjack
and I'm fine with maintaining the tasks files inside pkg-grass.
So if you think this is the best solution I even might subscribe
pkg-grass - perhaps granting commit permissions fo any DD would
be easier (we have this for Debian Med and Blends, you can ask
Alioth admins for this).
 
> the blends pages look nice, thanks for setting it up. I had not
> really heard of it much before now. If I may ask, how is this
> different than the old -tasks metapackages beyond now with extra
> bling?

It is NOT different from the metapackages approach.  I just suggested
some more fine grained metapackages.  IMHO a gis-workstation is a bit
to general.

> why can we expect them to be any more successful?

Because they are more up to date?  Because they specifically address
people like OSM mappers which are quite active but do not necessarily
want to install all the other packages - so they do not really feel
at home with Debian GIS?

> (I'll admit to still thinking about them as they were back in
> the dselect days)

The existence of reasonably shaped metapackages is practical whatever
tool you are using for installation.  So I do not understand your hint
to dselect. 
 
> > The good news is that obviosely nobody is against my action
> > and so I consider the move of the GIS Blends stuff to
> >   svn://svn.debian.org/blends/projects/gis
> > as accepted. 
> 
> Add whatever new work you like- please do not slow down, but
> kindly do not assume so much about other people's work and
> interest after a single unanswered email!
>  :)

The problem is if mails like this are unanswered I would conclude that
there is no general interest in this work and I will not get much
support in this.  This would mean I'm entertaining the GIS tasks on
my own which I really do not want to do because I'm not a GIS expert.
 
> > IMHO it would be a good idea to remove the old stuff from
> > pkg-grass SVN and possibly set a svn:external property for
> > those who might wonder what happened.
> 
> Do not do remove it, just add a README.Blends file or so pointing
> to and explaining your Blends efforts.

I hope this mail will help me finding a reasonable way to get commit
permissions.  I'd prefer DD writable SVN.
 
> Currently a number of the DebianGIS team are upstream maintainers
> helping out and not DDs, with access to the svn via $username-
> guest and alioth gforge group. I take it they(we) will be locked
> out if the -task is moved to the blends svn area?

I was talking just about the tasks files which currently seem to be
maintained only by Petter - so there is no real lock out.  But as I
said: The tasks files need more love and if you are sure they should
stay in pkg-grass SVN I might adapt somehow.
 
> Currently the mainly maintained thing is the package list in the
> DebianGis wiki.

Well, IMHO the most comparable thing with the tasks web pages is

   http://pkg-grass.alioth.debian.org/debiangis-status.html

If there is somebody keen on a feature of this page I'd volunteer
to reimplemnt this feature in the tasks scope.  If only somebody
would talk to mee about this ...

Kind regards

     Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de