Re: concurrent installation of different pkg versions
2014-04-28 2:16 GMT+02:00 Don Armstrong <don@debian.org>:
> On Sat, 26 Apr 2014, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> And simultaneous installation of multiple versions of packages is
>> simply a requirement for many research computing scenarios, usually
>> because there's a lot of bespoke scientific code that accomplishes
>> some specific goal but was not written to the standards one would
>> expect from professional programmers, and therefore doesn't easily
>> work with newer versions of libraries.
>
> The right way to handle this for research computing scenarios is to
> deploy virtual machines with specific versions.... otherwise you're
> constantly battling with trying to make sure that you're actually using
> the version that you think you're using.
>
> The quality of almost every single piece of scientific code I've ever
> worked with is so appalling that I'm always amazed when any of it
> produces any useful results, ever. And lets not even talk about whether
> the results it produces are accurate or reproducible...
I absolutely agree with both statements. And I would love to print out
the last quote in poster-size and place it in our lab :-)
However, there is some pretty good scientific software around, and
there are labs where programmers and other researchers work together
well to produce great software and great results.
But anyway, to give some input: We're exploring containerization here
for exactly that purpose (running old software versions in a defined
environment with less overhead).
Cheers,
Matthias
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Debian Developer | Freedesktop-Developer
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