Hi Dirk,
Short reply:
On 07/05/15 15:02, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
See https://xkcd.com/927/
http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2010/05/how-to-become-invaluable.html
You can't fix "easier installation" by inventing yet another "mine is better
than yours" package manager (as I keep telling a friend involved in a
Linux-ish port/generalization of homebrew). It just splinters and "almost
surely" never gets traction.
EasyBuild is not 'just' a package manager, it stands out by building
things from source (which you want to/need to do on HPC systems).
Show me a package manager that is flexible enough to support the
craziness that is scientific software (good examples are OpenFOAM, WRF,
CP2K, ...), provides out-of-the-box support for common compilers like
Intel, PGI, etc + supporting libraries for BLAS/LAPACK/FFTW like Intel
MKL, etc., and then you have a point.
Also, environment module files are essential to using HPC systems, which
EasyBuild takes care of as well.
Most of the other tools have never even heard of modules, let alone
support them.
The reason I remain bullish on Docker [1] is simply that it won the mindshare
game and is becoming widely-enough used. Part of that is technology (which
is good), part of is salesmanship and polish, and part is luck and happenstance.
What if EasyBuild could produce Docker containers for you?
We're not there yet, but we are already (very actively) looking into
adding support for generating packages for what was built with
EasyBuild, using FPM as a backend.
regards,
Kenneth
To me this is somewhat similar to github which succeeded because very good UI
made a very complicate underlying protocol (which is objectively still way
too hard for what we do: simple saves/retrieve/variants of work).
Dirk
[1] Required disclosure: I didn't just suggest SWC use it. Been there, done
that, and still have bruises to show it ;-)
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