Greetings, and thank you so much for your kind and thoughtful message, and your concern for improving Debian!
I love git, and use it to maintain GCL and AXIOM upstream at the moment. While in principle it might be a good idea to think of maintaining the packaging files that way as well, for the moment it is a bit too much complexity for my taste. I would eventually be approving everything from email notifications anyway, and would not like to frustrate would be contributors with an expectation of high commit volume. So for now I am happy with the source packages from the Debian archive. As for xmpi, like lam, upstream development has ceased, but these tools are still useful in diagnosing and visualizing mpi traffic and systems, as well as supporting legacy software using it, all with minimal maintenance requirements. Seems no reason to abandon them. Much of the value of Debian is in keeping archival software alive and accessible whenever the interest arises. Take care, Andreas Tille <[email protected]> writes: > Control: tags -1 pending > Thanks > > Hi Camm. > > as I said previously I consider you perfectly active. Since you did > not answered my mail below I assume you might be to busy. I hope you > are welcoming the NMU I did intentionally to the largest delay period > possible of 15 days. You can find all changes in Git at > > https://salsa.debian.org/debian/xmpi > > Please let me know if I should cancel this NMU. > > Kind regards > Andreas. > > Am Wed, Mar 11, 2026 at 08:09:07AM +0100 schrieb Andreas Tille: >> Hi Camm, >> >> I came across your QA page while looking at packages not yet on Salsa >> and was struck by the range. Gcl, axiom and maxima are non-trivial >> packages requiring real domain knowledge - thank you for maintaining >> these in Debian. That's exactly the kind of work that deserves a >> resilient maintenance workflow. I actually got curious about the xmpi >> package which seems to be on the other end of complexity level and I was >> wondering whether we need this in Debian any more. >> >> My pitch is simple: Salsa + tag2upload has made Git-based maintenance >> genuinely ergonomic. You keep full control, but the packaging history >> becomes legible, CI catches regressions, and the bar for occasional >> contributions (upstream authors, other DDs, grad students) drops to an >> MR rather than a debdiff by email. >> >> I'm curious whether you have specific objections - tooling friction, >> distrust of team workflows, or just not enough hours? The answer >> matters, because it informs how Debian should be thinking about this >> transition more broadly. >> >> Happy to help bootstrap a repo or pipeline if you want to experiment >> with one package. >> >> Kind regards >> Andreas. >> >> -- >> https://fam-tille.de -- Camm Maguire [email protected] ========================================================================== "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah
