Re: Reproducibility
On Fri, 30 Apr 2010, Johan Grönqvist wrote:
> >That is why we have backports.org and neuro.debian.net that offer at
> >least the latest and greatest for 'stable'. But this is still not
> >enough.
> To me (IMHO) that feels like _the_ solution, when combined with the
> debian snapshot service.
Exactly that -- snapshots! but not combined with anything: alternatives
are not a solution since it might be harder to control imho.
But consider snapshot.debian.org approach -- if the research system kept
up to a specific date -- you can deploy exactly the same environment
with consistent versioning later on with ease, and probably also simply
within a chroot using debootstrap within a matter of speed to the
mirror. The only thing to take care would be exactly the confusing
part -- alternatives (and possibly a custom system configuration if it
was of any relevance).
N.B. note for our neuro.debian.net -- we probably should setup such
snapshots service ;-)
The "alternatives" (or "modules" in some other research
environments/systems) solution is indeed appealing for deploying
heterogeneous systems which aim to satisfy variety of
researchers/projects at once (for example - university-wide high
performance cluster) if those groups indeed require some custom software
no available natively as a part of OS. But I think it just complicates
reproducibility -- complete chroot/virtual machine sounds more appealing
if reincarnation of the environment is necessary.
--
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