[OSGeo-Discuss] [Fwd: [DebianGIS] Freezing is not so far in the future, aka Where 1.0]

[Bruce Bannerman]

FYI.


As many of you know, the DebianGIS project is packaging a large number
of Open Source spatial apps for use within the Debian Linux
distribution.

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianGis


IMO, Debian is one of the key Linux distributions. From memory around
50% of distributions are derived from it (including Ubuntu). It has a
reputation for stability.

As well as Debian, the Debian derivitives and other Linux distributions
can also use the DebianGIS repositories.


As such the DebianGIS packages that Frankie and the DebianGIS project
members are preparing for Debian have relevance for a significant
portion of the Linux community.



From Frankie's email below it appears that Debian will soon be freezing
packages in preparation for the next stable version of Debian due out
later this year.


I'm sure that the DebianGIS team would welcome help from other
developers if you're able to spare the time.




Bruce Bannerman




------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Francesco P. Lovergine <frankie at debian.org>
To: pkg-grass-general at lists.alioth.debian.org
Subject: [DebianGIS] Freezing is not so far in the future, aka Where 1.0
Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 20:45:19 +0200

Hi all

This message is a very informal and incomplete report about
our Status of the Map.


I would remind that package freezing is roughly expected in mid July. 

People is warmly invited to think ASAP what upstream versions should go into
Lenny. Two months are not a so long time in the future and please
consider that our packages have a not so large user base for testing. 
Many packages also have a quite long dependencies chain which could
slow down britney job. So be very careful and defensive in uploading 
new versions.

There will be the possibility of uploading GDAL 1.5.2 (probably), hdf5 1.6.7 and 
hdf4 4.2r1 for lenny. IMHO grass is already frozen (but for a probable
6.3.0 preview version to be uploaded in parallel with the stable 
release). It would be nice to know if we have already to consider
frozen PostGis and Mapserver, but for some minor adjustment.
If people had to point patches for known upstream issues it would 
be great.

A big lack is Qgis which requires more love of what I'm
able to dedicate. Some volunteers headed to manage it better
for a 0.10.0 release, but it's still missing. About that, consider
that the ftpmasters' job will be specifically accurate, so
a damn good job need to be done to solve its main issues.

I worked a bit on uDig and gvSig: they both at the same time require
too much work in order to have them properly packaged (they lacks a 
proper multi-user installer for instance and there are also a few
license issue to be considered), and they are also easily 
installable as they are by the casual user starting from the upstream
provided installers, so probably they should not be on the top 
of our todo lists.

Saga Gis is easily buildable, but I had big problems in using it
also for working with quite easy shape and geotiff files.
It seems quite far from being a mature product. I would add
that among interesting experimental stuff, as already done with Ossim
which at least starts to have a shape. But still not ready for main.

I would hope other people would summarize status of OSM-related
packages.

Finally, we are still lacking human resources. Which is not a news
for this project, but I can see the same problems in other
teams, such as the Tcl/Tk group, sigh. We are in a bit better status
than one year ago anyway. I would prefer that some folks who
anyway do some packaging efforts out there in the GIS world would
collaborate here. But hey, we are in a free world and I know
that Debian standars are quite high and demanding ... 

Happy gis-hacking to all

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