Re: Biology packages in FreeBSD

[Steffen Moeller <moeller@pzr.uni-rostock.de>]

I am a bit confused about who raised what issue, though I would like to
support/comment on a few statements that passed my list-observing eyes:

 * Compilation of programs is little effort compared with the
maintenance of blast, fasta, ssaha, ... installations

    I strongly agree. The main advantage of Debian packages is on a
consistent
    setup across architectures and sites, so scripts to ease the
maintenance could be
    shared easily. Though, these scripts are not yet existing.

 * There is not much of  a point in distributing the binaries without
the databases

    This is right, too. However, there is no space on the Debian mirrors
for the databases.
    What I am dreaming of creating is an automated update mechanism of
all the basic
    databases out that that is easily extendable. This should even be
publishable if
    it was existing. I do not know if PRISMA of Lion Bioscience also
does the updating of
    BLAST etc indices or only o ftheir own indices. However, some tool
like that is what I'd
    wish to have. And Debian as a backbone with the prior mentioned
superior consistency
    would be beneficial in this course.

Any student out there interested to save the rest of the world from
becoming insane during all the tedious updates? This should be
publishable, too.

Many greetings

Steffen