Please create releases to sync with hhsuite

[smoe]

Hello,

I found ffsort_ not to be available in what Laszlo previously retrieved from http://www.splashground.de/~andy/programs/FFindex/ . It is apparently needed for the hhsuite 3 beta releases. Some googling guided me here.

Cheers,

Steffen

[milot-mirdita]

Hi Steffen,
There is no separate release of this repository. HH-suite and (our) ffindex repository are basically one project. Please always use the ffindex git commit that is specified in the HH-suite submodule to build the HH-suite. The current master commit, for example, is incompatible to the clang compiler.
Best regards,
Milot

[smoe]

Hi Milot,

I needed to think a bit about what you said. Of course by no means I would want to change how you work. And you have releases of hhsuite, maybe you find it favourable to then also have a release of ffindex.

The big hidden plan I think is that developers external to your group may find ffindex valuable to their cause. They then need to have a formalism to express their dependency to on a minimal version of ffindex. That could then be something like date.githash. We just need something the grows numerically with every release which hashes fall short to guarantee :o) Whenever you release a new version (of ffindex alone or of hhsuite and ffindex with it) this would then be a clear-cut signal for Debian and other downstream distros to update the version these redistribute. That said, hm, newer versions of ffindex are backward compatible with earlier versions with hhsuite, right? Otherwise we would need to also introduce an SOVERSION other than 0 for later versions.

In Debian we have ffindex as a separate package - admittedly only featuring hhsuite as a reverse dependency, but there may be local developments depending on the package that the distribution does not see. While there may be no immediate scientific merits, I propose to give ffindex a bit more of an independent life by giving it official releases and register it with bio.tools, SciCrunch and OMICtools to attract a bit more of an audience.

Cheers,

Steffen

[ahcm]

Debian uses the original FFindex, which you can find here:
https://github.com/ahcm/ffindex

[ahcm]

Sorting can be done with ffindex_build -s.

[smoe]

Ah, hello. Indeed, Debian used to redistribute the original ffindex. Thank you for the link - I was only aware of your splashground.de site before. I empirically found out that the original version does not build against the current beta of hhsuite, which frankly is the prime motivation to redistribute the package. Consequently, since two or three days, Debian now redistributes the version you maintain at the soedinglab's github repository, see: https://packages.debian.org/de/sid/ffindex . I had messed up the version, which should contain the date of the last commit (not the day I checked it out) and the hashtag. So, for now it is 0.9.9.7+soedinglab+git20180802. I happily accept instructions to remove that version and substitute it with something else should that be unbearingly erroneous.

So, there are now three different download sites for the ffindex library. And only the outdated one has a release and a version coming with it. Now I know, but for someone now working on a daily basis with your source tree, it is quite a text adventure.

Many thanks and regards,

Steffen

[ahcm]

The soedlinglab version is a fork. The other is not outdated.

[smoe]

Sigh. What should Debian do? hhsuite and ffindex are closely tied, see https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=ffindex and https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=hhsuite . I would not want to maintain the package "twice", I must admit.