Re: Role of libeazel
>I intend to update the Debian package of infernal to the newest stable
>version (1.0). I just noticed that it contains a copy of libeazel. I
>became curious about this library because it looked rather like a
>separate piece of code. My research enedet up in another copy of this
>library in hmmer 3.0b2 with a later time stamp. This makes me curious
>whether it makes sense to release this code as separate library tarball
>and build both programs, infernal and hmmer, against this library.
>From a software maintenance point of view this makes perfectly sense
>and even might enable other projects to profit from the library.
Easel (not eazel) is required by both HMMER and Infernal, but Easel
development is sufficiently rapid at present that the API is changing,
so it does not yet make sense to distribute the Easel library as a
freestanding package. Instead, for the forseeable future we are
including appropriate snapshots of Easel with the HMMER and Infernal
distributions, so we can guarantee that HMMER and Infernal are in step
with a particular Easel API. That is to say, it is unlikely that you
would be able to build both HMMER and Infernal against any single rev
of Easel.
I notice on the Debian mailing list that you are concerned about code
duplication on our end. There is no code duplication; Easel is a
single Subversion repository, and HMMER and Infernal source
distributions simply get packaged with appropriately versioned exports
from that repository.
When the Easel API stabilizes, it will make sense to package it
separately as a library dependency, but that will not be for a while.
Sean
--
Sean Eddy
HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus
http://selab.janelia.org/
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