> I don't understand this statement. It's not like it's the package split > that makes it more or less maintenable IMHO. Actually, IME it's often a > more split package that might be somewhat easier to maintain.
ROOT builds more than a dozen of libraries, even more than Geant4. Since splitting packages takes a significant amount of time (the entry in control is basically copy and paste, but creating the .install file isn't that fast), this takes more than 5 minutes (speaking from experience with Geant4). In Geant4 I also had the problem that lintian went completely crazy because it couldn't find the libraries from the other packages. Since the previous package is so much older, I won't even trying to work with these files - so much changed it's easier to start from scratch. I'm not saying I'm not doing it eventually, but for now packaging ROOT really has different problems. It installs .exe's to /usr/bin, ships tons of builtin libraries and also has some other terrible design choices in terms of its build system. > So history of this package shows that the interest wanes after ~2 years, > which meakes me wonder wether this is only driven by some external > factor, like some phd-driven work or similar. > > I'm *not* in favor of adding such big piece of software to the archive, > if it's interest is something that is assured to disappear in a couple > of years. So please make sure of your motivation and state it. For me packaging is also driven by the fact that I need it for my studies, but I don't think that's a problem. It's not different for my other packages as well. I will probably study physics for at least another 3 years, but I obviously can't promise I'll loose interest in packaging it eventually. Regards, Stephan
