[aur-general] Proposal to move sage-mathematics into [community].

[Peter Lewis]

On Saturday 14 August 2010 at 04:31 Stefan Husmann wrote:
> Am 14.08.2010 05:14, schrieb Loui Chang:
> > On Sat 14 Aug 2010 04:31 +0200, Sven-Hendrik Haase wrote:
> >>  On 14.08.2010 03:46, Xyne wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> I fully agree with the sentiments regarding duplication of packages,
> >>> but that is an upstream issue and unavoidable without a very
> >>> heavy-hands-on approach to the package, as already mentioned. The
> >>> package itself though is more than just a mesh of its components and
> >>> thus provides a real utility despite the underlying duplication.
> >>> 
> >>> In the absence of an upstream willingness to modularize the components,
> >>> the next best approach would be to have the package "provide" as many
> >>> of its components as possible (if any) to enable users to avoid
> >>> redundant packages on their own system. This would offset the cost of
> >>> the duplication and reduce user-mirror bandwidth and user diskspace.
> >>> The cost of the extra bits on the mirrors themselves is unfortunate
> >>> but far from critical.
> >> 
> >> If I have understood your correctly, you want sage to provide python and
> >> all its other components as if they were vanilla?

As someone who's used sage off and on over the last year or so, I originally 
thought that Xyne's approach would be best, but yeah it is such a big pile of 
stuff duplicating so many things that I don't think that's practical.

It may be that there are a few core components (however we define that) like 
maxima or octave that can be "provided", but if it "provides" everything then 
upon uninstalling it, I'd have to remember to reinstall the vanilla python et 
al. That doesn't sound too feasible to me.

> > It seems pretty ridiculous that they wouldn't have made provisions to
> > use a system python rather than a bundled one. I maintain brlcad which
> > bundles tcl/tk, boost, and a host of other libs but they have a proper
> > build system which can check for and use system libs. Some of the libs
> > are more obscure and probably should be bundled. I can imagine the same
> > situation would occur with sage-mathematics. I'm left wondering why sage
> > can't get their modifications incorporated upstream.
> >
> > I don't imagine using sage any time soon, but I can imagine users being
> > a little peeved if they required virtually two installations of python -
> > or any other major package.
> 
> The users of sage will not be peeved about that, because it is very well
> known that this is the case. Or if they are, will not use sage.

Well, many *potential* users will be, including me. In the end this 
frustration led me to uninstall it. I just don't have enough disk space for 
duplicated versions of virtually everything! :-(

Sage is a good step in the right direction, but they really need to think 
about better integration. It's not a software package, but a distro really.

I wonder if the sage team receives feedback from packagers about what a pain 
in the arse it is?

Pete.