On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 10:49 AM, <tabb...@ksplice.com> wrote: > On Fri, 6 Aug 2010, kamaraju kusumanchi wrote: > >> > Kamaraju, >> > >> > Overall I like your plan. And I'd like to help. >> > >> > I do not like starting with version 3.0.6. I think such an old version >> > is unlikely to attract many users and hence testing will be suboptimal. >> > In addition, upstream reports that upgrading to 4.5 is currently broken >> > (http://sagemath.org/mirror/src/changelogs/sage-4.5.1.txt), so we >> > know that older releases will incur substantial development challenges >> > that even upstream is not supporting. Moreover, upstream releases very >> > frequently (lately releases have occurred more often than once per month), >> > so by the end of the squeeze+1 cycle we will experience many, many upgrade >> > tests. So adding to the testing burden by doing a "dry run" with legacy >> > versions seems to me to be a very inefficient use of volunteer time. >> > Indeed, until the packaging process becomes very efficient (which might >> > take substantial time), I think it would be smarter to conserve limited >> > volunteer resources by not packaging some of the upstream releases. >> > >> >> You have a point. But the way I see it is this. >> >> Sagemath is constantly updated at a rate greater than debian can cope >> up. I highly doubt we will ever be releasing the .deb packages as fast >> as they release the .tgz files. So, at some point we have to skip >> releases and provide as latest debs as possible. I understand that. >> >> But now the situation is a bit different. Are we sure that we have all >> the deps of sagemath packaged into Debian? If the answer is yes, then >> I am happy to start with 4.5 right away. > > I think there are a couple new dependencies that are not in Debian; there > weren't any as of version 4.0 or so. I would recommend first getting > sagemath working building the copies contained in the sagemath tarball, > and then package them separately for Debian and switch over later in > development (this is how I did the original development, and it was much > easier to debug problems incrementally). > > I suspect that starting by doing the work incrementally with 3.0.6 first > might be easier than starting with 4.5 to begin with. There's a good > chance you'll want to switch tacts once you get the hang of it, but I > think if you try migrating the current package to 4.5, you'll end up > feeling overwhelmed by the problems and give up. Some partial progress of > mine on updating direct to 3.4.1 (shortly before 4.0) is available, in > case you find it useful (I don't think I was very far along): > > http://web.mit.edu/sage/www/sage-3.4.1-debian.tar.gz > > My experience is that one spends most of your time working on sagemath > packaging on (1) debugging and (2) waiting for it to build (it took about > 30 minutes to build on the server I was using). When I tried to update
Sage 4.5.x will take a lot longer than 30 minutes if you don't build in parallel. If you build the sagemath package in parallel in can take as little as 3 or 4 minutes on sage.math.washington.edu -- William > direct from 3.0.5 to 3.4.1, I found debugging problems resulting from > upstream changes took most of the time. I bet it would be much easier > when you can find the upstream change that caused the problem; since each > sagemath version has relatively small changes, that can make life easier, > especially if you're still getting used to dealing with the Sage build > system. > > One thing that I should warn you about is that now Debian has > substantially newer versions of various packages than Sage 3.0.5 was > designed for, and in some cases that will break things. The current Sage > 3.0.5 package was prepared for Lenny, and then tweaked a bit to keep it > compiling on newer stuff. So it's possible that the incremental approach > will prove to be painful and you don't want to do it. But if I were you, > I would probably start by just trying to do 3.0.5 -> 3.0.6, just because I > think that'll help build confidence and give you a better sense of the > nature of the challenge than going straight to 4.5. > > But it's really up to you. I don't have the time to help more than just > providing background information on how I did it and what problems I > encountered. > > -Tim Abbott > >> If the answer is no then the next question is what is the minimal >> version that we can package given the current set of packages >> available in Debian. There is no clear cut approach. we need to go >> back and forth a bit. We may need to file some ITPs and work on some >> transitions which is where the team becomes important. >> >> As for the support requests from users, sooner or later they realize >> that if there is a problem they have to go with the later version >> anyway. A bit of that frustration is probably good as it will drive >> some to come and take part in packaging sage for Debian. > > -- > To post to this group, send an email to sage-de...@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > URL: http://www.sagemath.org > -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
