Re: ARB 6.0 released

[rf@q-leap.de]

>>>>> "Andr" == Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> writes:

Hi Andreas, Elmar,

    Andr> Do you have a list of packages that's missing in your
    Andr> institute?

    Elmar> I'm not sure it'd be helpful. The reality at our institute is
    Elmar> that our base distro is rather outdated (Ubuntu 10.04, update
    Elmar> to Debian 7 is pending). We therefore have a lot of software
    Elmar> in /usr/local simply because the packages are outdated in our
    Elmar> distro.

please note that Qlustar is providing DebMed backports. So once you'll
have moved to wheezy, you could include our repo to get access to
a lot of up-to-date DebMed stuff.

    >> > I do not know "Environment Modules" but I agree that
    >> > maintaining several versions in a multi user environment is a
    >> > problem we do not have very handy solutions [...]
    >>
    >> This is the "Environment Modules" tool I was talking about:
    >> http://modules.sourceforge.net/
    >>
    >> It allows managing locally installed packages by providing the
    >> command "module" to handle modification of the users'
    >> environment. Issuing e.g.  "module add arb" would modify the PATH
    >> such that it now includes the paths to the arb binaries. It also
    >> includes versioning ("module add arb/6.0"), dependencies and a
    >> way to persist the loaded modules for a user. The "packages"
    >> (modules) are defined using small TCL scripts that define which
    >> variables have to be modified and how ("prepend-path PATH
    >> '/usr/local/arb-6.0/bin'").
    >>
    >> All in all it's a useful way to manage locally installed software
    >> without creating a huge mess in /usr/local.

    Andr> Hmmmm, I wonder how long this kind of tools might persist in
    Andr> times of docker.com and other virtualisation techniques.  But
    Andr> I might underestimate modules, thought.
 
Most HPC compute centers currently use modules. I don't think that
docker is going to change that any time soon (and hopefully never, see
my opinion below). modules is available as a package in Qlustar since a long
time. Don't see why it should be easier to maintain Docker instances of
each version rather than a cleanly compiled package on the platform one
is running on and using something like modules.

As an admin, I would also resist to just install and activate a third
party Docker container with the required package version. Who guarantees
the integrity/security of the binary blob you're loading on your
cluster? Things would change if someone like Debian or other trusted
authority would provide Docker instances as an alternative to install
packages. But is that going to happen?

So I see Docker more as a convenient tool to provide some selected
applications that are hard or impossible to get running on your own
platform. Or to try something out with little effort, or for a third
party software company to distribute their software packages as a
maintained container. But less as the backbone of a serious compute center.

Or would you as an administrator allow the Android App Store to be the
basis of your HPC cluster, user workstations, etc. Probably not. To me
the Docker Hub is very much the same thing as Android App Stores.

I could be totally wrong though ... :)

    >> It might be a candidate for packaging. Although it's not really
    >> "Debian Med".

    Andr> That's no point here.  We have packaged some other non-Med/Bio
    Andr> stuff as preconditions for our work.  On the other hand I
    Andr> would rather put this into Debian Science field to find more
    Andr> friends.  As long as somebody is doing the work which provides
    Andr> a reasonable solution for several people that's fine.

I could add the package on our list of to be maintained packages. We'll
probably also package lmod soon which is supposed to be more advanced.

-- 
Roland

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