Re: Debian Med Bioinformatics Sprint in Lübeck : post-install

[Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public44@thebird.nl>]

I also enjoyed the conf. One result is a further collaboration on
EMBOSS bindings to Perl, Python, Ruby and the JVM.

> Cool - but what is rq?  I can't find it in SVN nor on our tasks page.

Brilliant tool for parallelized running of programs. Like Gridengine,
or Torque, but *much* simpler to set up as it only requires one shared
dir (not even ssh!). Wil run programs/scripts on a single multi-core,
in a cluster, and in the cloud. I use it every day and have become
part of 'upstream'.

It is on Alioth in pkg-escience/rq-ruby1.8.git repo. I much prefer 
git over SVN. It is ready for upload, I think.

> >  * Pjotr's call to arms for better marketing, seconded by about everyone
> 
> Ahhhh, so Pjotr is our first marketing officier in the Debian Med team?
> That would be really cool!  I think with Tony they could really form a
> strike force. :-)

In fact we have started with the BMC paper, and an upcoming book
chapter. I think, apart from the natural packaging, the only really
useful thing would be a Bioinformatics page on the Wiki. Which should
include a short Howto for newbie packagers. As simple as possible,
without all the choices and options. Debian packaging is presented in
a too complicated way (to scientists, forgive the irony). That is
killing.

I am recording my learning steps, when I have time I may turn it into
a Howto. But don't hold your breath.

Thanks Steffen, Andreas and others. I found it inspiring to see people
taking software deployment so seriously. Its importance is usually
underestimated. It is important for science, and serious progress!

Pj.