Review of all the Debian Med debtags, and questions.

[Andreas Tille]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008, Charles Plessy wrote:

> I reviewed all the Debtags of Debian Med (except latest mgltools); I
> hope it gave me a better understanding of the system.
> http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/todo.html?maint=debian-med-packaging%40lists.alioth.debian.org

Charless, many thanks for your effort.

> First of all, I realised that Debtags is not a tree structure:
> Field::Biology and Field::Biology:Molecular are two different tags. Also
> I realised that subdivisions like this can be expressed by combinations
> of simpler tags. For this reason, I would like to ask the removal of:
>
> field::biology:bioinformatics
> field::biology:molecular
> field::biology:structural
> field::medicine:imaging

Reading this I realised that my perception of DebTags was wrong (because
I also had the concept of a tree structure).  If there is no tree structure
you are perfectly right with the removal.

> Many of our programs work on biological sequences. I know we discussed
> this before, but I really think that works-with:sequence would make
> sense. In combination with field::biology, it would fully replace
> field::biology:bioinformatics. I volunteer to do the transition by hand
> if necessary. We currently have 84 field::biology:bioinformatics
> packages.

ACK.

> I am undecided about what to do with the biology:: facet. We have no
> plans to make programmatic use of it for the moment, and I did not use
> it during my review, as it is quite parcellar. If nobody objects, I
> would recommend its removal.

When I'm unsure I try to compare with others: How do other sciences
handle the facet tag?

> I acknowledge that the Debtags team is under constant pressure from
> developpers who want their pet tag added to the list, and that
> underpopulated instances are no excuse to create more of them. However,
> I would like to suggest the following ones (in addition to to
> works-with:sequence, that I strongly support instead of just suggest).

Support +1.

> works-with::trees
>  We would use this for our phylogeny packages, and many other tools not
>  related to biology could use it. works-with::graphs could be an
>  alternative, but potentially confusing.

+1

> use::simulatinng
s/simulatinng/simulating/
Or should it rather be "simulation"
>  At least two of our packages would use it (adun.app, epigrass), and
>  others like flightgear could definitely use it too. I think it would
>  easily gain critical mass.

Sounds very reasonable also for other fields.

> special::unmaintained
>  We unfortunately package some programs that are Upstream-dead, as many
>  other Debian packages are. Sadly, this tag could become very popular.

Even more reasonable and useful than simulating ... and sad.

> works-with::temperature
>  We would have three candidate packages, but criticall mass would
>  probably attained with sensors and weather packages.

Probably nice - I personally see not so much use for it than in the
other tags - but perhaps I'm lacking some knowledge.

> The following ones are just ideas not really reflecting our needs:
>
> made-of::data:examples, or role::example
> role::translation
> role::library (for languages like Perl, the current dichotomy is not relevant)
> use::calculating
> role::policy
>  We actually have one such package, mipe (Minimal Information for PCR
>  experiments), and soon our Group policy will be
>  part of a package as well.
> uitoolkit::xulrunner (in our case: biofox)

Out of the other suggestions I specifically support the latest one because
I think there is a real need for it.

Thanks for your review

            Andreas.

-- 
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