add a "how to use debian science" section to the wiki

[Giovanni Dall'Olio]

Hi,
I think you could add, on the home page of DebianScience
(http://wiki.debian.org/DebianScience), a section on 'how to use it'.
At the moment your home page is structured in many useful sections
(Goals, Resources, How to Join, etc..), but, it's been months since
the first time I saw the site, and I still don't understand well how
to use debian science's resources.

Is there any repository I can add to my debian sources list? Do the
packages work in Ubuntu or other derived distributions? Can I download
them manually? Can I install Debian/Science as a stand-alone
distribution? What are the git/svn repository for?

Thanks, I hope you will find the suggestion useful.


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[Andreas Tille]

On Sun, 15 Jun 2008, Giovanni Marco Dall'Olio wrote:

> I still don't understand well how to use debian science's resources.

Well, you can use Debian Science perfectly as you are using Debian
because it is a completely internal project and is nothing else
than Debian itself.  We just felt a need to found a team that works
as a strike force for scientific software inside Debian.  The concept
to do this is called Custom Debian Distributions and I feel that
we once again are beaten by this badly choosen name for this concept
because if you hear the word you might think it is something else
than Debian - but it is not.  Rather the contrary Custom Debian
Distributions [1] are a completely internal effort.

> Is there any repository I can add to my debian sources list?

No.

> Do the packages work in Ubuntu or other derived distributions?

May be.  I personally don't care and thus I don't know.  If other
distributions care for binary compatibility with Debian the packages
will probably work - if the distributor does not care you should
blame him and not us for beeing incompatible to what he started with.

> Can I download them manually?

Sure you can as any other Debian package - but it makes no sense.

> Can I install Debian/Science as a stand-alone distribution?

The SkoleLinux project serves separate installation media which contains
the most work out of the Debian Edu CDD project and some preconfiguration.
The Debian Science project currently has no separate installation media.
It might be reasonable to enhance the cdd-dev code to approach this but
nobody has done the actual coding.

> What are the git/svn repository for?

The are helpful for group maintenance of packages that are relevant for
the Debian Science project.

> Thanks, I hope you will find the suggestion useful.

The suggestion to write good documentation is always useful even if in
this special case the suggestion was probably based on a misconception
about the nature of the project.  To copy an extract of this explanation
to the wiki might be helpful anyway to make things more clear.  Would
you volunteer to add this as a paragraph to the wiki?

Kind regards

          Andreas.

[1] http://people.debian.org/~tille/cdd/

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[Giovanni Dall'Olio]

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 9:40 AM, Andreas Tille <tillea@...> wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Jun 2008, Giovanni Marco Dall'Olio wrote:
>

>> Thanks, I hope you will find the suggestion useful.
>
> The suggestion to write good documentation is always useful even if in
> this special case the suggestion was probably based on a misconception
> about the nature of the project.  To copy an extract of this explanation
> to the wiki might be helpful anyway to make things more clear.  Would
> you volunteer to add this as a paragraph to the wiki?

Thank you for other replies.
A draft for such a section could be:

"
How do I use Debian/Science?

You can use Debian Science perfectly as you are using Debian
because it is a completely internal project and is nothing else
than Debian itself. We just felt a need to found a team that works
as a strike force for scientific software inside Debian.

There have been efforts to create a CDD (Custom Debian Distribution)
for Debian/Science, but at the moment no installer is available.
Please see the section 'http://wiki.debian.org/DebianScience/CDD' for
more details.

Moreover, a proposal to create a custom repository for science-related
unofficial packages has been made; see
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianScience/UnofficialRepository for more
info.
"



> Kind regards
>
>         Andreas.
>
> [1] http://people.debian.org/~tille/cdd/
>
> --
> http://fam-tille.de
>



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[Andreas Tille]

On Tue, 17 Jun 2008, Giovanni Marco Dall'Olio wrote:

> A draft for such a section could be:
> ...

Sounds good.  BTW, I'd go for a real Wiki page instead of drafts here on
this list.  A wiki is a wiki is a wiki - just use it and don't be too shy. ;-)

Kind regards

          Andreas.

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