Easy access to external repositories.

[David Strubbe]

Hi Artur,

Since you are discussing the question of ensuring the reliability of
results, let me point out that you can add a "test"phase in the Portfile,
to run a testsuite with the command "port test". I am developing and
maintaining several software package for condensed-matter physics and have
found this quite helpful in validating the builds, and making sure users
can do so too.

David

On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 6:05 AM, Thibaut Paumard <thibaut at macports.org>
wrote:

> Le 02/06/2015 11:32, Artur Szostak a écrit :
> >> Do you already have commit access to the repository?
> >
> > No, and it is not clear that I should be the one with such access for
> ESO. This is something we have to decide here at ESO first.
> >
> >
> >> If not I can act as a sponsor for those packages, until you get it.
> >>
> >> My duty cycle will be more in the range of a couple of days for packages
> >> that I don't know yet (I'd be responsible for any damage they would
> >> cause), and approx one day or less for small updates on packages that I
> >> know already.
> >
> > Thank you for volunteering. I fear that a couple of days may be a bit
> too long for a number of our astronomers at the moment. This will have to
> be discussed by us to see how to proceed. We have about 108 Portfiles in
> our repository and this number will grow as new instruments and their
> associated data processing software comes online. Unfortunately, experience
> has also shown that a fair amount of understanding of the ESO source code
> packages for the 19 different instruments is required to correctly build
> the software. What I mean by correct, is not just that the software
> compiles and runs, but that is does not introduce any nasty artefacts into
> the scientific results. This is actually a big motivator for us at ESO to
> take on the responsibility of binary packaging the ESO software for our
> astronomers, rather than them doing it by themselves.
> > If you take responsibility for maintaining our Portfiles in the default
> MacPorts repository, how would you propose the update procedure to work?
> Would you only update with the patches we deliver? If you or one of the
> other core maintainers has to make a change independently, how would this
> be validated for quality assurance?
> >
> > However, with that all said, there certainly are one or two Portfiles
> that are actually 3rd party library dependencies for our software (e.g.
> py-photutils) or are less critical. These could be the first good
> candidates to consider moving over to the default repository.
>
> Dear Artur,
>
> I am only given the amount of work involved and the duty cycle you have
> in mind, I think that if you want to go that route, someone from ESO
> needs to get commit access. In the meantime I can help you experiment
> with a couple of Portfiles, like the dependencies you mention. So you
> will be able to see what is being built, when etc.
>
> You would still be the maintainer (the one listed as such in the
> Portfile) and I would only commit things exactly as you have sent them
> to me (or via the tracker). However, by committing something that you
> have prepared, my responsibility is also engaged.
>
> It may be that the best thing to do is to keep the external repository,
> however my offer stands, be it only for 3rd party dependencies.
>
> >> For the record, all the ESO packages are being packaged by volunteers in
> >> Debian, and I already maintain packages will small userbase,
> >> concentrated among astronomers.
> >
> > I know about those packages. Unfortunately many of our users also do not
> regularly use those packages, since they tend to be out of date, which has
> a negative impact on the quality of scientific analyses. The RPM
> repositories also do not deliver our full data processing stack. We are
> actually in the process of preparing full YUM and APT repositories of our
> software for the ESO instruments. There again, we will have to see and
> negotiate with the respective communities if it makes sense to migrate any
> of that to the Fedora or Debian repositories.
>
> For the Debian community, I guess you already know Ole Streicher and the
> Debian Astro effort then? This subtopic is better discussed on
> debian-astro bei lists.debian.org. In particular, updates could be
> managed through the backports infrastructure.
>
> Kind regards, Thibaut.
>
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