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Re: Status of uw-prism packaging for Debian



Hi Ira,

On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 01:54:16AM -0700, Ira Kalet wrote:
> ...
> If I had been an FDA staffer, they would not have been approved, but

Thanks for sharing your experience.

> I am just a poor physicist...

Wel, well, we poor physicist. ;-)
 
> Although Prism has been in use for 20 years at the UW and we have
> never had a misadministration due to errors in Prism, that does not
> guarantee it won't happen.  So, yes, the safe way to proceed is to
> make no claims as to fitness for clinical use, and to only claim
> that the program is for educational purposes.

OK.
 
> >preconditions for prism in Debian anyway.  What about simply starting
> >with packaging these preconditions.  Even if we might finally decide
> >that we do not deliver a prism binary package (but just provide
> >packaging stuff to make it simple creating a Debian package with very
> >less effort) we can turn Debian into a system where it is brain dead
> >easy to install Prism onto.  Perhaps it is a good idea to contact the
> >Lisp developers via their mailing list[1] how to start with these Lisp
> >preconditions.
> 
> I would not want to make it "brain dead easy" to install Prism.

Sure.  I guess there is no such thing like "brain dead easy"
installation of Prism.

> That is exactly how a disaster can happen.  It is like handing a
> loaded gun to a small child.  I have written some relatively simple
> instructions for building a Prism system from source code, as part
> of the User Reference Manual, but they presume you understand how
> Common Lisp programs work, and also how RTP systems work.  This
> software is not a drawing or CAD tool or email client, or word
> processor.  It is complex and dangerous. Even having a turnkey
> running system still requires creating some extensive supporting
> data files, that have to be in the right format, with the right
> data, which depends on the particular radiation therapy machinery
> you are simulating.  Using the system requires substantial knowledge
> of the process and concepts of radiation treatment planning.

So what you are practically doing is handing over the loaded gun to
those who are able to read and follow your instructions. :-)

> I'll start with one of the components of Prism, the user interface
> toolkit library, SLIK, which is benign, has nothing to do with
> medicine, and which should be an easy way to learn what the
> packaging requirements are.  After that, the technical issues of
> packaging Prism should be relatively clear.

+1

I thinks whatever the outcome might be this will in any case help people
who want to run prism on a Debian machine.
 
> >Hope this helps and thanks for your effort
> >
> 
> You are welcome.

:-)

  Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de


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