Re: NARVAL & ENX : two potential new packages
Hi Andreas,
Andreas Tille wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 01:28:30PM +0100, Xavier Grave wrote:
>> My idea to have NARVAL related to debian-science was to ease promote Debian
>> in science area where for the moment we have Scientific Linux.
SL has the backing of some large (!) and prominent (!) research
institutions worldwide. One cannot exclude the possibility for them to
move from Fedora towards Debian, but one should not expect that in any
way. And it is IMHO not the right motivation to work on Debian packages
in the first place.
I very much encourage NARVAL and ENX for Debian because of the knowledge
transfer that is intrinsic to it. Many smaller groups, say in molecular
biology labs, will have similar problems, if on a smaller scale, and to
then have a more hardware oriented stack available is helpful. So,
please grant Frederic-Emmanuel the commit rights to the
repository and then let's find a sponsor/mentor for his work.
> Quoting their homepage[1]:
>
> SL is a Linux release put together by Fermilab, CERN, and various
> other labs and universities around the world. Its primary purpose is to
> reduce duplicated effort of the labs, and to have a common install base
> for the various experimenters.
>
> The base SL distribution is basically Enterprise Linux, recompiled
> from source.
>
> If it is about reducing duplicated effort on the labs I'd consider a
> Debian Science Blend (perhaps with some preconfiguration sugar as Debian
> Edu is doing) a very reasonable way to go. At least exacly this is
> the intention of Debian Science.
Well, yes, this is something that the nuclear physicists behind SL might
well think about. For us, the aim should less be to substitute their
current effort but to have some partial compatibility with them so
researchers can more easily test things at home or for
less-production-oriented/more-experimental institute desktops and
consequently profit more from the knowledge transfer.
We have a few SL users as Debian-Maintainers and as applicants, hoping
to soon count Frédéric-Emmanuel to it. Many SL users like and use
Debian. So, we don't need too much of promotional activity, really,
except for our openness and curiosity, possibly, and that is indeed
something that blends help with. But with large international
collaborations you just need to agree on something - and that is SL for
... the last decade? I personally don't mind to see an improved
compatibility between Debian and SL as a service to the scientific aims
that SL supports. Conversely we profit from nice new packages like
NARVAL and ENX.
Enjoying the science
Steffen
>
> [1] http://www.scientificlinux.org/
>
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