Debian package for Gammapy

[cdeil]

This Friday I'll join the Debian Astro packaging tutorial by @olebole and I'd like to try and create a Debian package for Gammapy 0.3 (which I'll release tomorrow).

The maintainer for the package will be the "Debian Astronomy Team" as explained here. Anyone interested to follow this or help out is welcome to join their mailing list.

I'll use this ticket to discuss any issues that come up during packaging.

[cdeil]

ITP = intent to package filed (automatically copied to the debian-astro and debian-python mailing lists):

• https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=795369
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-astro/2015/08/msg00000.html
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-python/2015/08/msg00036.html

[cdeil]

In the past years https://wiki.debian.org/DebianAstro has come a long way, a lot of Python packages are now included, even recent ones like astropy-healpix or astropy-regions are already there.

Gammapy still isn't packaged, and also Sherpa isn't there. I wanted to do it, but I'm not a Debian or Ubuntu user, and it takes some expertise and a Debian installation to do the packaging, and then to update as new versions come out.

I think the repo for Gammapy that was started is now here: https://salsa.debian.org/debian-astro-team/gammapy

If anyone is interested in doing this task, please comment here or get in touch.

This would help make Gammapy installation easy for Debian & Ubuntu users, and it would also increase the Gammapy quality, because Debian has a large set of machines they test on, i.e. we would get bug reports if Gammapy doesn't run on some architecture (e.g. ARM).

[Bultako]

https://twitter.com/DebianAstro/status/1003578349825003520

Does this mean we can install gammapy with sudo apt-get install gammapy? I have tried with no success.. or we should do apt-get install astro-all and install all debian-astro

[olebole]

Currently, it is only in Debian Testing (which will be "Debian Buster" in a year or so), not in the current stable release "Stretch" (Debian 9). In principle, gammapy could be backported to the stable release without too much effort. This would however need someone to do it, preferrably by taking over the whole package. We (the Debian Astro Team) would of course help.

[cdeil]

@olebole - Thank you very much for adding it to Debian!!!

Will this automatically get added for Ubuntu also, or is that something that needs to be done manually?

Is there a way to install the package now, e.g. by adding some "channel" to the list of places where packages are fetched from? Or would getting it now require the extra step of "backporting" you mentioned?

[olebole]

@cdeil it will be part of the next Ubuntu release (18.10). For the current one (18.04 LTS), also a "backport" would be needed.

"Backporting" basically means to prepare and upload the package to the "backports" area ("channel"), together with the dependencies that are not in the old release (which is the "regions" package for gammapy), so not a big deal. The major part (and reason, why I don't want to do it myself) is however to take care of possible Debian bug reports, and to update the packages if needed.

[cdeil]

I think now and with small effort, we should do two things:

• Improve http://docs.gammapy.org/dev/install/other.html to add the infos that from the 2018 releases on, Gammapy will be in the Debian and Ubuntu system, but that might not give you the latest version. This option will become more attractive over the years as Gammapy and it's dependencies become more stable.

• Add instructions to http://docs.gammapy.org/dev/development/release.html#make-release what needs to be done to update the Gammapy Debian package when a new Gammapy release comes out. I think the steps are more involved than for conda or Macports, but @olebole, probably there's a repo and description we can link to and then we can at least try to do it ourselves next time?

[olebole]

A few pointers:

• Gitlab repository on salsa.debian.org
• Debian maintainers page on tracker.debian.org
• Debian bug database for gammapy
• Ubuntu launchpad page

[olebole]

I guess this one could be closed? The (remaining?) change seems to have nothing to do with Debian.

[cdeil]

I'd prefer to leave this open for now as a reminder. The remaining action item here is to add the links and summarise the information from above in the Gammapy docs. Assigniing to myself and putting on the v0.9 milestone.

[olebole]

We will have a freeze in spring 2019, and the release of Debian 10 "Buster" around mid-2019. it would be nice to have some direction which version should be included then... just as a long-term pre-reminder :-)

[cdeil]

We will have a coding sprint first week of October in Madrid, and there probably define a roadmap, or at least talk about the future of Gammapy. But Gammapy will remain under heavy development for at least another year. Concerning packaging I guess it's simple though: whenever it's time to package something up, the latest release from PyPI should be used, not matter if that is 0.11 or 1.3 or whatever.

[cdeil]

I update the Gammapy install docs in #2588.
Closing this old issue now.