MOTU-science for "official" development team delegation

Hello all again,

With the archive reorganization currently going on [1], I'd like to
gauge the team's interest (especially William Grant and Morten) in
becoming an official development team [2] for science packages.

As our team stands now, we have 9 members: 4 are full ubuntu-dev, one
more should ubuntu-dev (but hasn't applied, I think), one is inactive,
and the other three are at least -contributor level (but have not
applied yet). I think we are ready to take part in this new system. We
would have to make the non ubuntu-dev people "apply" to stay in the
team since they would have upload permissions. I'll be willing to take
on the communication with the technical board over the implementation
for this.

Regards,
Scott

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArchiveReorganisation
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopers/TeamDelegation

Kamal Mostafa wants to join motu-science

Hi All,

Kamal Mostafa has been active merging and fixing science library
packages. He's experienced developer, and would like to join
motu-science. Would someone be able to approve his membership on
launchpad? He has recently applied.
Thanks,
Scott

Bugmail for geda-gaf

I see MOTU Science is a bug contact for all the old separate geda-*,
libgeda source packages, which were removed from Lucid.

Since the upload of gEDA 1.6.0-3 (source package geda-gaf), I wonder if
the MOTU-Science team admins would like to subscribe themselves to
bugmail for that?

Best regards,

Peter C.

Programing PICs with Ubuntu

Eletronics simulations software

Serious bug in atlas, yet no action

Ciao all-

I've recently run into what appears to be a known and reported problem
in Atlas 3.2.1: the SSE2 optimized version is broken.  This version is
currently shipped with Jaunty, and is reported to still be broken in the
Karmic (see bug reports below).  There are numerous unassigned bug
reports in launchpad which appear related to the problem, some of which
are six months old:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/atlas/+bug/363510
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/atlas/+bug/376739
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/atlas/+bug/406520

I understand that it is unusual to e-mail a dev list to call for action
on a particular bug, but the failure mode here seems particularly
serious.  Programs that depend on the broken library compile perfectly
fine, seem to return valid numerical results, and show no signs of being
broken unless one compares against correct results.  I fear that many of
my colleagues who use Octave and other numerical tools that depend on
Atlas are less in careful in such ways, and it concerns me that bogus
results are probably, at this moment, being accepted as valid in
research labs around the world.

The way I came across the bug was by compiling the new release of
Octave, 3.2.3.  Both the eig and eigs functions (eigenvalue
decompositions, for full and sparse matrices respectively) returned
unexpected results in make check.  For the set of messages related to
the problem, see the following threads on the Octave list:

https://www-old.cae.wisc.edu/pipermail/bug-octave/2009-September/009527.html

A fix for this bug seems critical to get into Karmic, and possibly into
older Ubuntu versions still supported.

Cheers,
Cyrus Hall

Want to join/help motu science

Hello,
My name is Scott Howard. I'm interested in helping with ubuntu maintenance of science packages,
specifically octave and octave packages. I'm a bug control on LP, and have done a lot of work with
gnome-power-manager, including maintaining the testing PPA, working on bzr branches, writing patches
for upstream, keeping the apport hook up to date, and getting patches subscribed into ubuntu. I familiar
with ubuntu packaging and patching (using quilt), but I haven't done any from scratch. I eventually would
like to work my way into working with debian's packaging of octave and science packages as well,
especially since the heavy lifting of our packaging work occurs in debian.

LP: showard314

Thanks.
Regards,
Scott

[OT] Call for presentation for the LSM 2009 topic 'Libre resources and software for scientific research' (Nantes, France)

Hi,

The LSM 2009 will have a 'Libre in science' session next July (like in
2007). Please find below its call for presentation (your submissions
are welcome!) and do not hesitate to forward it to specialised
interest mailing lists or science projects your are involved with.

Hint: Andreas Tille will be one of the speakers.  :)

Along the main 'Libre in science topic' (expected to last two days)
there will be specialised meeting of developpers and users of
scientific free software research projects (to be announced, watch our
web page) and a SIG symposium (http://www.ogrs2009.org/).

By the way, I take the opportunity to outline that at the very same
time, there will be in Rennes (a city close to Nantes) the useR!
conference (http://www.agrocampus-ouest.fr/math/useR-2009/) so people
might easily attend partially both events.

Best regards,
Frédéric Lehobey -- for the 2009 team of volunteers of topic 'Libre in
science' of the LSM.

[Français plus bas -- French below]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Call for presentation for the LSM 2009 topic "Libre resources and
software for scientific research"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The 10th Libre Software Meeting (a free software annual event held in
France since 2000) will take place in Nantes from 7th to 11th July
2009.

You will find at this location:

  http://2009.rmll.info/Call-for-Communication-paper.html

the call for presentation of the topic "Libre resources and software
for scientific research" that will highlight resources (data,
thesaurus, etc.) under free [1] licenses made and used for scientific
research. We would also like to receive propositions about biology or
linguistic (topics not much addressed in the former LSM editions) but
all sciences are welcome (whether they are natural, formal, social or
humanities...).

You are also able to view the call for presentations for the other
topics of the LSM 2009 at this location:

  http://2009.rmll.info/Call-for-presentation-concerning,60.html

The "Libre resources and software for scientific research" 
coordinators for the LSM 2009.

[1] like in free speech

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Appel à présentation pour le thème « Logiciels et ressources libres
pour la recherche scientifique » des RMLL 2009
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Les 10es Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre (un évènement annuel
du logiciel libre en France depuis 2000) se dérouleront à Nantes du 7
au 11 juillet 2009.

Vous trouverez à cette adresse :

  http://2009.rmll.info/Appel-a-presentation-pour-le-theme,12.html

l'appel à présentation du thème « Logiciels et ressources libres pour
la recherche scientifique » qui met cette année l'accent sur les
ressources (données, thésaurus, etc.) sous licences libres produites
et utilisées pour la recherche scientifique. Nous aimerions aussi
recevoir des propositions liées à la biologie ou à la linguistique
(sujets peu traités dans les éditions précédentes des RMLL) mais
toutes les sciences (de la nature comme formelles ou humaines et 
sociales) seront les bienvenues.

Vous pouvez aussi consulter les appels à présentation des autres
thèmes des RMLL 2009 à cette adresse :

  http://2009.rmll.info/Appel-a-contributions-des-10es.html

Les coordinateurs du thème « Logiciels et ressources libres pour la
recherche scientifique » des RMLL 2009

--

-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-science-request <at> lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster <at> lists.debian.org

[LP Bug 229681] Re: Aeskulap images not seen

Hi all,

Aeskulap has problems that may be caused by dependancies that are not defined
with engouh precision. As a consequence, the same binary package works on some
environments but not others.

In my hands, it did not work on an Etch/Lenny mixture, but worked after
upgrade. However, it does not seem to work in the last two stable releases of
Ubuntu.

Does anybody has an idea on how to tackle properly this bug?

In the absence of a better approach, I will ask the user (or any MOTU Science)
to try to rebuild the package and see if it solves the problem. In that case,
since Debian Med has some patches to apply anyway, we could update aeskulap in
Debian, and the MOTU could then sync from it.

Have a nice day.

-- Charles Plessy, Debian Med packaging team, Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan.

----- Forwarded message from markb -----

Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:51:02 -0000
Subject: [Bug 229681] Re: Aeskulap images not seen

Aeskulap does not work on intrepid either :(

--

-- 
Aeskulap images not seen
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/229681
You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
of the bug.

----- End forwarded message -----

Whither CERNLIB (, Paw, Geant3.21) in Debian? RFA / future plans

[Please follow up ONLY to debian-science]
[CC'ed to the Fedora CERNLIB maintainer and to Ubuntu MOTU-Science, for
their information]

I'm cross-posting this to debian-user on the off chance there may be
some Debian-using physicists there who don't follow debian-science,
which seems to have morphed into a developer list lately.

I'm seeking one or more people to take over maintenance of the following
FORTRAN- and physics-related source packages.

cfortran
cernlib
paw
geant321
mclibs

(This message does not apply to my unofficial Geant4 .debs)

Since my employment is no longer in the physics field, and family
obligations continue to reduce my amount of free time for Debian, I no
longer have time or interest to maintain these packages properly.  The
maintainer switch can be gradual (co-maintainership for "apprenticeship"
for a while is OK by me, but can't be too much of a demand on my time)
but needs to be complete well before the release of Squeeze (Lenny+1).
Please follow up to debian-science <at> lists.debian.org if you want them.
Nasty details below.

For the reasons below, I think these packages are much too difficult to
be maintained by QA or by a team (e.g. debian-science) that is not
specifically targeting them.  Therefore, if there are no offers, I will
request their removal from Debian after the release of Squeeze (assuming
they do not get RC bugs filed against them prior to that); until then I
will maintain them on a best-effort basis, with a note in NEWS.Debian to
the effect that they will go away after Squeeze release.

Prospective maintainers should be aware that the packages are
particularly challenging for the following reasons:

* Most of the code is written in either K&R C or FORTRAN IV, with
arch-specific #ifdef's around code for cutting-edge machines like PDP
11s.  (That is not a joke.)
* Bugs in new versions of gfortran often break various bits of code on
obscure architectures and make the test suite fail.
* The upstream build system is based on imake.
* The Debian packaging is dpatch + tarball-in-tarball, with some hacks
to make it possible to use Debian patches for building on non-Debian
systems.
* GUI code is based on Motif ... building the programs against Lesstif
seems to mostly work (with some patches) but there may be as-yet
undiscovered GUI bugs.
* There was a lot of non-free stuff that had to be cut out of the source
packages to get the existing tarballs suitable for main.  However, this
may not cause you much work, since...
* Upstream has been dead since 2006, and moribund for several years
prior to that.
* There is no upstream support for shared libraries, nor for builds on
Linux arches other than m68k or i386.  Large patches have been hacked
into the Debian source packages adding these.
* Upstream source is not 64-bit clean.  Properly fixing this would
require man-years of work.  In the meantime, a fellow named Harald Vogt
has hacked together some patches that mostly make things work on 64-bit
machines... but the patches are so fragile that they break unless
programs are statically linked against the CERNLIB libraries on 64-bit.

I will wait a week or two to hear from prospective maintainers.  If
there are any, I will email them with more info at that time.  If not,
I'll submit official RFAs to the BTS and send a note to debian-science
that PAW and friends are slated for doom.  In the meantime, prospective
maintainers may want to take a look at my "CERNLIB on Debian" pages at
http://people.debian.org/~kmccarty/cernlib/ and also at the source
packages (prepare to be horrified).

best regards,

--

-- 
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty <at> gmail.com>
WWW: http://www.starplot.org/
WWW: http://people.debian.org/~kmccarty/
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751

need sponsorship

Hi,

I have uploaded my computer algebra system "cadabra" to REVU more than
a month ago, but no-one seems to have taken any interest in sponsoring
it. Can someone on this list give me a hand?

Cheers,
Kasper