[gentoo-dev] Re: New category for AI related packages

[gentoo-dev] Re: New category for AI related packages

[Anna (cybertailor) Vyalkova]

On 2025-03-11, Eli Schwartz wrote:
> On 3/10/25 4:53 PM, Maciej Barć wrote:
>> Hi!
>> 
>>> Although maybe it should be sci-ml.
>> 
>> Let's _not_ use *-ml since for us ml stands for OCaml (which comes from
>> ML - "Meta langauge").
>> 
>> sci-ai, dev-ai, and app-ai (say, "app-ai/ollama"?) are nice IMO.
> 
> 
> - please don't top-post
> 
> - Let's _not_ use *-ai since AI stands for generative artificial
>   intelligence which most of these packages are not, even according to
>   the intended use of the *-ai term in this thread
> 
> I don't understand your argument at all. "ml" is hardly a reserved
> concept, and dev-ml exists precisely for "libraries and utilities
> relevant to the ML programming language", which isn't going to get
> confused with sci-ml/ for the same reason nobody would dream of
> searching in sci-cpp/ for "scientific software written in C++", as the
> emphasis is on *science* and naturally brings the concept of machine
> learning to mind.
> 
> I could argue that "AI" is too confusing of a term to use because it is
> the name of the pale-throated sloth (and because there are other
> abbreviations that are DEEPLY not on topic for this mailing list). But
> fortunately people possess the ability to recognize context, and will
> recognize that Gentoo packages are not talking about members of the
> animal kingdom. They will also recognize sci-machine-learning when they
> see it.
> 
> Or, we could bite the bullet and stop clinging "short and witty two-word
> categories".
> 
> Let's call it "sci-machine-learning/".

Looks good, but would be better without the second hyphen: 
"sci-machinelearning". Kind of similar to "app-mobilephone".

There is indeed no limit on the category name length or structure in the 
PMS. The way they are named in Gentoo is just a tradition.

> But obviously, whatever we call it shouldn't feel like deceptive
> trickery to the people ***using*** the packages from this proposed new
> category. So I oppose anything with the name "ai" in it, as it's way too
> specific, unless it is strictly limited to e.g. ollama, which isn't
> actually packaged in ::gentoo and isn't actually on topic as a result.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: New category for AI related packages

[Ulrich Müller]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 643 bytes --]

>>>>> On Tue, 11 Mar 2025, Anna (cybertailor) Vyalkova wrote:

>> Let's call it "sci-machine-learning/".

> Looks good, but would be better without the second hyphen:
> "sci-machinelearning". Kind of similar to "app-mobilephone".

> There is indeed no limit on the category name length or structure in
> the PMS. The way they are named in Gentoo is just a tradition.

There are good reasons to keep the total path length short. For example,
test suites may break if the directory path under PORTAGE_TMPDIR is too
long (and I learned this the hard way).

The category name is a good place to start because it affects multiple
packages.

Ulrich

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 507 bytes --]