Re: [ITP] astrometry.net-0.38-1

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please@cygwin.com>]

On Mon, Nov 07, 2011 at 09:46:21AM -0500, Charles Wilson wrote:
>On 11/7/2011 8:18 AM, Jussi Kantola wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 11:13 PM, Charles Wilson wrote:
>>> You should probably do that, to ensure that the build procedure works on
>>> your machine. Also, to test the resuts; I have no idea how to use this
>>> stuff.
>> 
>> It builds fine, and the resulting installation works fine when I put
>> some sky catalogs in /usr/share/astrometry/data/. 
>
>Good news.  Please post *your* rebuilt packages somewhere, so they can
>be uploaded.
>
>> The question
>> becomes, would it be better to create a separate package
>> (astrometry.net-data-tycho or such) for the (example/test) catalogs,
>> than to have them in the binary/source packages?  Theoretically, and I
>> suppose in eventual actuality as well, there could be many different
>> sets of catalogs, so separate packaging sounds like the way to go ...
>
>Definitely separate. However, it may be best not to create any catalog
>packages at all, and instead provide helper scripts (in
>/usr/lib/astrometry/scripts/ ?) to d/l and install the individual
>catalogs.  The reason for this suggestion is twofold.
>
>First, if you create a cygwin package containing the data from catalog
>"foo", then cygwin will be *redistributing* that data.  However, many
>scientific databases of this sort, while free (gratis) to use, prohibit
>redistribution -- everybody is required to get them directly from the
>source.  So, for this sort of catalog, a helper script to enable the
>end-user to do THAT is the only solution.
>
>Second, these catalogs are HUGE. 70GB? 25GB?  That's 10 to 30 times the
>size of the entire cygwin distribution, source and all -- for one
>catalog.  Our mirrors probably won't accept that.

I've been trying not to offer an opinion here but it isn't clear to me
why so many people voted +1 for this package.  It seems like we're
adding a huge package to the distribution just to help out a very
miniscule user base.  Do we really need this package in the Cygwin
distribution?

cgf