Bug#869135: Please don't adopt giza for libpgplot-perl

[Karl Glazebrook]

Hi everyone,

Thanks everyone for the responses -  and Ole I do appreciate your enthusiasm for and the efforts with giza. I also take the point that pgplot has a problematic license and is effectively abandonware. (Well I would say development stopped as it reached a natural finish point, but yes there are not bug fixes.)

However for me this is trumped by the fact that giza is not yet a ‘almost complete replacement apart from a few minor bugs you can report’ as it has been characterised. Let me be specific. 

For example the perl/PGPLOT module (which I own on CPAN) comes with a suite of test 12 scripts. When I tested them against giza, only 4 of the most basic ones passed!! 

This is more than just bugs - basic features people use all the time (like interactivity) are missing. (I corresponded with Daniel Price at Monash - they are aware but I gather development has slowed due to personnel. We are actually working together on trying to restart development) The other packages quoted must only use basic features.

I would say that practicality must trump politics here. It may be a year or two more before giza is ready to be a complete replacement. And it is most important that users be given a CHOICE until then. The current architecture makes it extremely complicated to unpick (I had to run a dozen obscure commands). I propose it works like this:

There be two packages that can provide ‘libpgplot’ functionality. giza and classic pgplot and that libpgplotperl only care that one of them is installed. (Is this possible with apt?). So the user could do either of:

apt install pgplot-classic libpgplotperl
apt install pgplot-giza libpgplotperl

(just making up suggested package names)
I’d even be happy for the second one to be the default, given the politics, as long as the first is possible for people who need it.

Does that sound reasonable?

(BTW I am not a Debian or apt expert, and have no idea what the difference is between ‘in Debian’ and ‘out of Debian’ I just know it used to work and apt fetched it from somewhere.)


Karl


> On 27 Jul 2018, at 7:29 am, Carlo Segre <segre at iit.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> I concur, the sooner we eliminate pgplot5, the better.
> 
> Carlo
> 
> On Thu, 26 Jul 2018, gregor herrmann wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 10:13:58 +0200, Ole Streicher wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Karl,
>>> I am the Debian maintainer of giza, and I created this bug to move from
>>> pgplot to giza. [..]
>> 
>> Thanks for your detailed summary, Ole.
>> 
>>> To summarize, I would very much prefer to keep the package linked to
>>> giza, and to fix the problems with giza when they appear in the wild.
>>> But this is my personal opinion; the final decision is up to the package
>>> maintainer (Gregor Herrmann, and the Debian Perl Group).
>> 
>> There's not much I can add. I also was happy that we can move libpgplot-perl
>> into Debian proper as giza is free software, and as there have been
>> no bug reports so far, I currently see no reason to revert this
>> change. Also thanks for your offer to help in fixing problems in case
>> they arise in the future.
>> 
>> Karl, in case you hit any concrete bugs in our libpgplot-perl linked
>> against giza, please don't hestitate to file a bug report.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> gregor
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> Carlo U. Segre -- Duchossois Leadership Professor of Physics
> Interim Chair, Department of Chemistry
> Director, Center for Synchrotron Radiation Research and Instrumentation
> Illinois Institute of Technology
> Voice: 312.567.3498            Fax: 312.567.3494
> segre at iit.edu   http://phys.iit.edu/~segre   segre at debian.org