Title: "How to be a distribution-friendly project"
Invited talk by Donnie Berkholz, Gentoo Linux


Getting ABINIT integrated into Linux distributions will help to increase 
its adoption and to ensure that users have ABINIT well-integrated into 
their systems and kept up-to-date easily. ABINIT is already packaged in 
Gentoo Linux, and Donnie will share his experience creating and 
maintaining ABINIT's Gentoo package and offer suggestions for 
improvement.

Technical and philosophical questions that determine how easy or 
difficult it is for distribution packagers to work with ABINIT 
developers will be discussed. Technical issues include the basic 
metaphor that ABINIT's build and installation process is an API to 
distribution packages -- it should be changed carefully and 
purposefully, and changes should be well-documented. In addition, Donnie 
will describe the level of control and system integration desired by 
packagers. Philosophical issues, including user expectations and 
licensing requirements, differ between distributions and can cause major 
conflicts with upstream developers. Finally, Donnie will discuss 
developments toward the future of distribution packaging so that ABINIT 
developers can consider how this fits into the future of ABINIT.


Why packaging is good
Technical needs
	Build process is an API
	Versioning is sane
	Bundling libraries
		Plugins
	Optional deps
		Bad: Automagic w/o overrides
		Good: Automagic defaults
		Plugins
	Control over build tool operations
		Compiler, etc.
		Good: Reasonable defaults w/ overrides
Philosophical requests
	User expectations
		Consistent UI
		Uses system prefs
	Patented algorithms
	GPL-incompatible libraries used by GPL apps
	Goals of distribution: to be free, etc.
Being helpful to the packager
	PACKAGER-NOTES file
	Where to send patches & suggestions?
		Where to find submitted patches & bugs?
	DIY packaging
		OpenSUSE build service
	Looking forward: The future of packaging
		Producing packages from a VCS branch