[AstroPy] Deployment and packaging

[Sergio Pascual]

Hi all, just muy 2 cents from a linux packager (disclaimer: I create
packages for Fedora).

Most (if not all) linux distributions manage dependencies between
packages automatically. If you package needs Sextractor (for example),
it's downloaded and installed together with your package. That's not a
problem at all (of course, if your dependence is packaged also).

What is a problem is when upstream releases a package with bundled
libraries or other packages. Duplicated programs or libraries are
considered bad practice and not allowed in general, so packages that
come with it's own version of system libraries are patched to use the
system library.

>From my point of view, the problem of packaging is mostly solved, just
using the native tools for package management of the operating system.
I try to include new astronomy packages in Fedora (last one is
asciitable), but it takes some time.

For faster creation of linux packages we could use a service such as
build.opensuse.org. It allows to create packages for several linux
distributions.

For Mac I'm sure there are package management systems also. It's just
a a matter of creating the appropriated packages.

Regards, Sergio

-- 
Sergio Pascual                        http://guaix.fis.ucm.es/~spr
gpg fingerprint: 5203 B42D 86A0 5649 410A F4AC A35F D465 F263 BCCC
Departamento de Astrofísica -- Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)