Hi all - obviously I'm outside SAGE development, but I'm a long term debian person (although not as a developer) and I'm motivated to work with others to get SAGE packaged for debian. If SAGE were ever to be integrated into debian proper, it would need to link in with already existing packages and developers.
On 20/10/06, Martin Albrecht <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Thursday 19 October 2006 18:04, kaimmello wrote: > > > I think Martin is not suggesting to use the official Debian packages but > > > to provide our own repository, > > > which means we would (eventually) maintain our own deb versions of GAP, > > > Maxima, etc. This > > > is a great long term goal, IMHO. > > This would ensure SAGE for debian is the latest and greatest but would also ensure SAGE is never available through standard expected repositories that debian users utilise (i.e. main, contrib, non-free on the debian servers) > > IMHO it's quite dangerous to provide and maintain our own packages of > > all components (GAP, Maxima, etc) because > > I strongly agree with this. Debian packages some 10,000+ packages, which, at least in the "unstable" branch (which is in fact extremely stable for day to day workstation use) are very up-to-date packages (e.g. python2.5 is available and has been for some time). If there are significant SAGE changes to something already available in debian (e.g. pyrex mentioned below) then of course that would need to be distributed as a forked version. But everything else such as GAP and Maxima is available in debian. The "cost" is that the debian version of SAGE may not be the very latest from SAGE upstream, but if it is properly integrated into debian then that is a huge benefit. > > - it requires much work that, if lacking, may cause SAGE package to > > become obsolete > > - if, on the contrary, all efforts are concentrated on SAGE, the > > traditional packages of GAP, Maxima, etc, may become obsolete, and it's > > not a good idea to grow by cutting our own roots. > > - if SAGE team works on one component but then the team of that > > component comes out with a major release not including SAGE patches, we > > can occur in a fork, and is it's IMHO very bad. > > - by having more than one version of the same component, for example > > one stand-alone and one included in SAGE, we risk to betray the spirit > > of the free software, i.e. to use the available pieces of software. > > Doesn't it recall the "Hell of DLL's" in Windows world?? SAGE has been > > up to now the best "glue" for the scientific software...IMHO it would > > be really nice to glue also all existing debian packages. > > > > My hope would be to collaborate with the maintainers of the existing > > packages in order to update them with SAGE requirements in mind. > Exactly :-) > This might work for Maxima, GAP, etc. but it will be difficult for libraries > like Python where SAGE is an pretty early adopter -- but Debian can handle to > install both Python2.4 and Python2.5 -- and almost impossible for Pyrex where > SAGE's version already is some kind of fork as our patches didn't get > accepted upstream. In that case a sage-pyrex package will be needed? > Presumably the trick to get the packaging work up and running is to work on packaging a snapshot of SAGE for which the debian unstable versions of GAP, maxima, python etc. are up-to-date enough. I had success a few months back with this approach by building SAGE 1.3.2.1. Anyway, it does seem there are two different trains of thought going. It may make sense for both to be investigated as both have their plusses and minuses. I'm interested in utilising debian's resources as much as possible. Over the weekend I'm planning on opening a project on alioth.debian.org to start work on this goal. Some people from debian-science mailing list, along with some from this list, have expressed an interest in working on this. Interesting times. Cheers James > Martin > > > Best regards. > > > > Tiziano > > > > > > > -- > name: Martin Albrecht > _pgp: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x8EF0DC99 > _www: http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~malb > _icq: 177334829 > _jab: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > -- James McCaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
