Snapping scientific software

[Alberto Mardegan]

Hi there!
  Please bear with my boasting for a while. :-)  I just wrote a blog
post [1] on my experience with snapping photogrammetry software, that is
software which can build a 3D model out of a set of 2D photographs.

I also made a video overview of the process:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELHOjC_V-FE


What might be of interest to the readers of this mailing list, is that
there is a multitude of software tools out there which are not packaged
for Linux, mostly because their authors are more interested in
programming than in software distribution.
That is certainly the case for scientific software, where authors are
researchers who excel in their field but who often happen not to be
interested in software distribution (presumably because they target
other university researchers, who are anyway supposed to hack on the
sources).
Sometimes they are also not even very good programmers, which can make
building their software harder than what it could be.

Snapcraft and snaps can be of enormous help in this case.

I enjoyed writing those snaps, and despite being initially totally
indifferent about these projects, I've ended up contributing to them
with pleasure.

The bottom line is: if you have time, and are looking for some cool
software to snap, have a look for scientific and academic projects.
Chances are that they are not packaged for Linux, and that their
popularity can benefit a lot from being snapped.

At the same time, you'll be making snap more popular, which is always a
win. :-)

Ciao,
  Alberto


[1]:
http://blog.mardy.it/2017/03/making-snap-packages-of-photogrammetry.html