On Tue, 2 Nov 2010, Troy Dawson wrote:

> Hello,
> As was stated before, for Scientific Linux 6, if a package is in EPEL, we 
> would like to keep it in EPEL.
> But there are some packages that we feel should go into Scientific Linux. 
> This usually because they are needed during the installation process, or for 
> some other reason.
> I am trying to gather the list of packages we will need to add.
> Here is what I currently have.
>
> - packages changed/added for trademark reasons and/or branding.
> - SL tweaks packages
> - openafs (it isn't in EPEL)
> - icewm (it isn't in EPEL and it would be good during the install)
> - revisor (will be used for building distributions and sites)
> - firmware - specifically network based firmware
>
> Here is what is in epel thus far.
> http://mirror.anl.gov/fedora/epel/beta/6/

How about:

   ScientificPython
   djvulibre
   freefem++
   gnumeric (maybe)
   mail-notification
   octave
   openreduce
   pdflib-lite
   pdftk
   pybliographer
   python-bibtex
   tomboy

not all of these are specifically 'scientific' though.

I note that some of the versions of packages in the sl6 test tree are 
older than things we ended up needing to upgrade in sl5, e.g. I have a set 
of 2009 tidy packages to match some other bits we build.  I'm slightly 
surprised that the 2007 version was current when el6 was frozen...

If packages are in the base or EPEL is requesting a more current version 
in EPEL likely to be successful?

If packages are in EPEL who looks after things like security updates for 
them?

If packages arn't currently in EPEL does anyone know how much effort it is 
to add them (assuming I an happy to volunteer to maintain the packaging 
for the ones I will need to build anyway)?

Sorry if I'm asking stupid questions, I've previously mostly avoided EPEL 
because of a bad experience a very long time ago (which might not even 
have been EPEL, I might have mixed it up with a different repo).

  -- Jon