Hi,

I sent this message to this list, sage-devel and debian-science on March 16th. It did not appear here yet, so I am sending it again now, after subscribing. Since the discussion happened on sage-devel [1] and debian-science [2] until now, I suggest you answer there.

Cheers, Tobias Hansen

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/sage-devel/1HGbf4EZGb0 [2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-science/2013/03/msg00037.html

-------- Original-Message -------- Subject: GSoC project: make the Sage build system more distribution friendly Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2013 17:08:12 +0100 From: Tobias Hansen thansen@debian.org

Hi fellow free software science guys!

I would like to propose a Google Summer of Code project to make the Sage build system more distribution friendly. I am a Debian developer looking for a co-mentor from Sage and possibly Fedora. We have to figure this out until March 28th, when the mentoring organizations have to submit their applications to Google.

Both Fedora [1] and Debian [2] are currently in the process of packaging Sage. It would be beneficial if the changes necessary to make Sage use system libraries would be done in Sage itself to avoid duplicate work. For details, see the project description at the end of this mail.

I would mentor this GSoC project, if it is clear that Sage welcomes these changes and someone from Sage becomes a co-mentor. This would ensure that changes are made in a way acceptable by Sage and can be accepted into Sage in the end. It would also be nice to have an additional co-mentor from Fedora who tests the changes on Fedora and gives feedback.

So, what do you say? Thoughts about enhancing the build system? Co-maintainer volunteers?

Cheers, Tobias Hansen

= Project Description =

== Description of the project: == The mathematics software system Sage is shipped together with all its dependencies in the form of spkg packages. Linux distributions package the dependencies separately and want to obtain from the Sage website only Sage itself (and possibly patches for dependencies). The Sage build system currently expects all dependencies to be in the form of spkg packages. The idea is to enhance the Sage build system to accept a list of spkg names, for which the spkg is not used, but the libraries provided by the OS are used instead. Given that Sage robustly supports this scenario, it will not be difficult to create a Debian package of Sage.

== Deliverables of the project: == - support in Sage for choosing a set of dependencies that are satisfied by the OS instead of spkg's - a Sage Debian package

== Desirable skills: == familiarity with shell scripts, makefiles and C libraries

== What the student will learn: == - managing a compilation of a large, heterogeneous set of software components to create a user-friendly product - The student will gain equal amounts of insight into the inner workings of both a Linux distribution and an upstream software project.

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/SciTech/SAGE [2] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianScience/Sage