Hi Marvin, On 2019-08-12 18:35, Marvin Renich wrote: > * Mo Zhou <lu...@debian.org> [190812 10:31]: >> To this end, I wrote the policy #5 [3]: >> >> A package that includes a machine learning model, must also include >> the corresponding training program, or depend on the package that >> provides >> the corresponding training program. >> >> Does that make sense? If it looks good, then the solution >> for this bug is already obvious enough. > > Perhaps I am not interpreting what you are saying correctly, but I would > say it is wrong. The corresponding training program must be packaged in > Debian, but it seems unlikely that there would be a binary package > dependency from the model to the training program
The original "policy" was based on a rather strong restriction that training script must be present when an ML model has been installed. I meant "Depends" on the original text, but perhaps "Suggests" is better than that since "Depends" may introduce circular dependency or the arch-all-dep-on-arch-any problem. That means "depend on ..." could be revised to "`Suggests:`" > (result of running the training program with > specific input data, if I understand correctly?) Yes, correct. > The source package would need to Build-Depend on the training > program and its inputs, but in general there would not need to be a > normal Depends. I see. The idea is that an ELF binary (ML model) doesn't have to Depend on it's compiler (training program) and source (input data). This makes sense to me and the "Suggest:" restriction may be better. The "Suggest:" relationship implicitly hints the user about the following questions: 1. what is the binary blob /usr/.../foobar.ml-model installed by the package foobar? 2. where did these digits come from? 3. how can I well understand how this model is created by the original author? 4. how do I obtain a similar model with my own dataset? etc. For most users I think they'll not try do actually dig into the detail of the model, or even try to understand what it is. So changing the model -> training script relationship from "Depends" to "Suggest" could also avoid pulling the whole stack of training software when installing the model. > Perhaps you were just being sloppy about Build-Depends vs Depends, but > when writing policy it is important to be very specific about that. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.
