[gentoo-science] Summary of 29-06-2010 meeting

[gentoo-science] Summary of 29-06-2010 meeting

[Kacper Kowalik]

Hi Folks,
below I present to you summary of sci meeting that took place at 
#gentoo-science on 29.06.2010 20:00 UTC. Full log is available at:

http://dev.gentoo.org/~xarthisius/gentoo-science_meeting-2010-06-29.log

1) current state of herds:
    sci : main libs are in good shape, though we need to find 
replacement for devs less active at the moment
     things to be looked at: blas/lapack

    sci-physics: currently understaffed, main source of bugs: root and geant
       people that volunteered to look after the herd:
          dilfridge, h0nk

    sci-electronics: lost lead, understaffed at the moment
       people that volunteered to look after the herd:
          TomJBE, dilfridge, rafaelmartins
       possible fresh blood: Stefan Salewski

    sci-biology: good shape, no big project that are causing troubles

    sci-chemistry: good shape, though quite big herd, many active 
maintainers

    sci-geosciences: gis packages maintained by scarabeus, gdal needs 
immediate fixing, understaffed

    sci-mathematics: priority to bump Scilab, lots of big and hard to 
maintain packages (e.g. octave, singular)
       people that volunteered to look after the herd:
          tomka (singular), rafaelmartins (octave and friends)
        + grozin already taking care of maxima and friends

    Sage-on-Gentoo:
       pretty much well covered by separate discussion on g-sci ml. 
Issues raised:
          - pushing patches from sage upstream, possibly in 
collaboration with python team

2) Policies
    * Introduce testing for demanding packages via e.g pkg_posttest, 
prepare testing procedures for filing STABLEREQ bugs
    * peer review of new ebuilds (like in sunrise) on #gentoo-science
    * extensive QA before moving to main tree (which I volunteered to do 
:) )
    * having sci-oriented AT (tomka x86, kiwifb ppc)

3) Web page/doc/wiki
    * project page needs updating (!!!all devs/users please at least add 
your names/ functions to docs in overlay!!!)
    * every pkg should have "longdescription" in metadata.xml
    * @g-overlays is currently working on some solution for git overlay 
that would give as wiki and some other tools (I suggested redmine to them)

4) Priorities
    - recruitment
       * java guru - existing or future dev that could help with great 
number of java using sci packages
       * CAD guru - person that would take care of freecad and its deps 
mess (reavertm started to work on it, we should ask if he's interested 
in joining sci)
       * "general" guru - we always need new devs...
    - electing a lead
       * as a project we should have a lead and organize elections

5) Any other business
    - scarabeus asked us to consider merging sci-* herds into one sci, 
since:
       * we don't generate that much of bugs
       * we are not territorial
       * most of us is already in more than one sci-* herd

TODO list:
    * send mail to people that have access to sci overlay and are not 
yet being recruited, if they're willing to become devs (me)
    * update project page (everybody)
    * update entries in /var/mail/alias/misc/sci* (everybody)
    * send mail regarding election (jlec)
    * search for people that could join us on irc (possibly sunrise 
contributors) or bugzie (everybody)
    * contact arch teams about our dedicated ATs (jlec + people involved)

Hopefully I haven't missed much :)
Cheers,
Kacper