Debconf10/Unofficial/Talks/MathematicalSoftware

What is it about?

An open discussion about how to make Debian a better system for mathematicians. Mathematical software is software that is useful to people doing mathematics. Examples include: computer algebra packages; interactive geometry software (e.g. kig); specialized software for e.g. graph isomorphism. For much of mathematics, exact or verifiable computation is an important feature, so packages like GMP are crucial.

Where and When?

• Thursday August 5, 2010, 11:30
• Interschool Lab, 7th floor, Schapiro Building, Columbia University Morningside Campus
• video stream http://video.debconf.org:8000/interschool_lab.ogv
• IRC: #debconf-interschool on irc.oftc.net

Questions to be discussed

• What should be long term priorities for Mathematical software in Debian?
  • Core packages?
  • Missing packages?
• What should be the priorities for the next stable release?
  • High impact bugs?
• Working with upstream
  • Licensing
  • Bundling of libraries
• Working with each other
  • What are opportunities for colloboration?
  • Are we missing tools?

The special case of SAGE

One of the long-term packages that would be packaged should be SAGE (package: sagemath). It is, simply put, a "glue" of many packages related to Mathematics that are already in Debian.

From a distribution/packaging/shipping perspective, it presents some challenges, unique to it:

• In its full version, it is simply huge
• It is hard to have only a single maintainer keep up with it (as it would, essentially, mean be a maintainer of many other packages that are already packaged in Debian).
• It currently is uninstallable in sid and has problems with the current python transition, as things have changed from python 2.5 to python 2.6
  • The "glue" part of the package is written in python
• It used to (still does?) contain patches to the programs that it glues together that should be pushed to the maintainers/upstreams of other packages. This requires a bit of legwork.
• (something of a lower priority, perhaps:) Since it is huge, the user should be allowed to use it installing as few dependencies as possible (otherwise, it may end up installing, say, a web server or an SQL server---you get the idea, via indirect dependencies). This would mean that putting together a live CD for sagemath is harder than it should be, for size reasons.
• The upstream release cycle is regular and short (about 1 month, if I am not mistaken)
  • Partly due to the short release cycle, the upstream team is unhappy with the current situation of the packages in Debian.
  • The upstream project discourages the use of the version in Debian and something must be done about this.
  • Since the package is uninstallable, it is a RC bug, but it is likely that the package will just get dropped from the distribution.
  • The current maintainer of sagemath in Debian (apparently) doesn't seem to mind to hand over the maintainance to other people: http://bugs.debian.org/573538