Re: [gentoo-soc] Interest in Improve packaging of scientific software

[Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@gentoo.org>]

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Hi,

On Sun, 18 Mar 2018 20:29:49 +0100 Federico Lodovici wrote:
> Hi,
> during this week I've updated my gsoc proposal document, you can find it
> here:
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bN3ZiEGweg1t2SmPztIu6aveE5jQIZFGm722L31_tiM/edit?usp=sharing
> What do you think? How can I improve it?

Most important: provide detailed per-week plan of your work. This
is very important. Listing deliverables is good, but we must see
per-week progress on how you are going to obtain them. In case on
unexpected problems the plan may be amended later if mutual mentors
and student agreement is reached.

The detailed plan is not just formality: it help a lot to see how
student understands their task and how realistic are objectives
within given time frame. Of course it should be reasonable without
extremes: not too simple to be reasonable for 3 months of work and
not overcomplicated, because student should do work timely.

Please note that according to the GSoC program rules, mentors must
evaluated student based on the final submitted application.
Amendments after the deadline are not possible.

> TF needs a lot of python dependencies and also optional cuda
> toolkit and cuda libraries

We already have CUDA toolkit and libraries in the sci overlay. They
may need some update, but it shouldn't be a problem.

> I’ll then start the most challenge part, porting and packaging
> Intel Tools.

While Intel stuff may rightfully be a part of your project, I do not
recommend to focus on them too much, since this is a proprietary
software and GSoC is all about Free/Libre software.

> I’m also interested to port Intel’s python distribution

I've discussed this project with Intel devs on one of the
conferences. There is nothing special about it: it is a normal
Python linked with Intel libraries and with some math libs replaced
with more optimized free software solutions. So everyone can do the
same with Intel MKL without need to obtain Intel Python. They
created this project mostly due to marketing issues, since python
is a popular language and management want to establish Intel's
presence in this area.

If you want to pursue this task, I recommend to build on FLOSS
solutions as described above, packaging Intel Python itself is
quite useless.

> I’d like if it is possible to bring into the sci-gentoo overlay
> an “official” matlab ebuild

Devoting a whole month to the proprietary piece of software is
questionable again. Devoting some time to improve
proprietary software packaging in Gentoo is OK, but devoting half of
your time for them is questionable at least.

> I’ve fixed a compilation bug on sci-physics/rivet and I’m
> finding the best strategy to fix sci-lib/scipy.

Please provide a links or bug numbers for bugs you have fixed in
the main repo. I found only your version bump of rivet (commit
23ff9c6da1eb892b12e7a0b1edbf4d87ae4f6b26). If you have made other
changes, please provide all the links in your proposal.

Do not forget to run repoman on your packages or changes, your
overlay clearly have some QA issues right now (e.g. packages lack
metadata.xml).

Bottom notes:

1. Please provide your scheduled absence during the coding period if
any: you may have exams or other events when your availability will
be limited

2. We need to know your availability hours and time zone.

3. You must provide more contact information, see top of the
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/2018/Ideas
page for the list of our requirements:

«Give us your contact info and working hours. Please provide your
email address, home mailing address, and phone number. This is a
requirement and provides for accountability on both your side and
ours. Also, please tell us what hours you will be working and
responsive to contact via email and IRC; these should sum to at
least 35 hours a week.»

There is no need to provide your personal data in publicly visible
draft, however be sure to include it in the final proposal.

Thanks and good luck!

P.S. Please, do not top-post.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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