Ondrej Certik wrote: > >> While solution (1) is against the "Debian Way" (2) is next to impossible >> from a debugging standpoint, i.e. which version of libSingular, g++ and >> clisp are you using? I don't think anybody intends to get Sage into the >> official Debian distribution because maintaining a stable branch release >> has some rather unpleasant limitations. You can't just bump up to the >> current stable release on a whim, so I think getting Sage into Ubuntu is >> a >> much more reachable goal. It also seems that Ubuntu is getting a lot >> more >> mindshare in the *desktop* these days (compared to Debian unstable).
I meant Debian *stable* in the end, not *unstable* > Hello > Could you please elaborate more on what limitations there are in > Debian to maintain the package in the stable branch? Disclaimer: I can only describe from what I saw happening on the LyX and ATLAS mailing lists. I have never been a Debian packager/developer nor have I ever applied to be one, so I might be mistaken about several issues. > It seems to me, > that getting the package to unstable is the same work as getting it to > Ubuntu. Well, Debian supports a lot more architectures and from what I know it is discouraged to limit the architecture due to non-technical reasons. Sage is widely used on Linux and x86, x86-64 and to some extend on PPC and Itanic, but what about the other 9 or so architectures Debian supports? They provide build infrastructure, but who would care about Sage on Linux/ARM? The other issue I have seen was that in stable you had to patch bugs, not add features. Specfically: When LyX 1.4.4 came out the Debian stable package was still 1.4.2, so instead of upgrading to 1.4.4 wholesale the maintainer had to pick the patches out that fixed bugs and to apply them. It might be possible to update to a new minor version in stable, but it seems to be discouraged. Now LyX isn't exactly moving fast, but can you imagine that with Sage's release frequence? (Potshot: Not at the moment ;)) > It actually has the advantage of being both in Debian and > Ubuntu as it gets to Ubuntu automatically. That is certainly true, but I do not believe that William's scenario (2) will happen anytime soon. I believe that Sage can live just fine with scenario (1). > And as to the propagation > to the stable release of either Debian or Ubuntu, it seems to me it is > the same in both distributions - only Ubuntu releases three times more > often. And looking at the pace of Sage releases: Who would want to work with the Sage released 1.5 years ago? Who would maintain such old releases? That and the (more or less) reliable 6 months release time frame of Ubuntu could make the (potential) synchronisation of Sage releases a lot more plannable, because who knows when the next Debian stable will come. I use to admin some boxes with Debian stable a long time ago and the neverending wait for Woody (finally released in 2002) made me switch distributions. Sarge came along nearly 3 years later, so the release frequency of Ubuntu has been higher than 3 times that of Debian stable. And some of the discussion regarding the removal on non-free documentation out of debian (I believe it was the glibc doc among other things) makes my head spin. The issue was postponed to get Sarge out of the door, but still. Alas, I don't want to start a flame war about Linux distributions, so anybody who feels offended please correct me offlist or put me in your kill file :) > > Ondrej > Cheers, Michael --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
