On Fri, 30 Apr 2010, Johan Grönqvist wrote: > >That is why we have backports.org and neuro.debian.net that offer at > >least the latest and greatest for 'stable'. But this is still not > >enough. > To me (IMHO) that feels like _the_ solution, when combined with the > debian snapshot service. Exactly that -- snapshots! but not combined with anything: alternatives are not a solution since it might be harder to control imho.
But consider snapshot.debian.org approach -- if the research system kept up to a specific date -- you can deploy exactly the same environment with consistent versioning later on with ease, and probably also simply within a chroot using debootstrap within a matter of speed to the mirror. The only thing to take care would be exactly the confusing part -- alternatives (and possibly a custom system configuration if it was of any relevance). N.B. note for our neuro.debian.net -- we probably should setup such snapshots service ;-) The "alternatives" (or "modules" in some other research environments/systems) solution is indeed appealing for deploying heterogeneous systems which aim to satisfy variety of researchers/projects at once (for example - university-wide high performance cluster) if those groups indeed require some custom software no available natively as a part of OS. But I think it just complicates reproducibility -- complete chroot/virtual machine sounds more appealing if reincarnation of the environment is necessary. -- .-. =------------------------------ /v\ ----------------------------= Keep in touch // \\ (yoh@|www.)onerussian.com Yaroslav Halchenko /( )\ ICQ#: 60653192 Linux User ^^-^^ [175555] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-science-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100430175145.ge8...@onerussian.com