I think that Steven has a point here. Technically we have all in place and Tims "Reexport" snipped is indeed the solution for creating Matlab like toolboxes. Its quite interesting that nobody has yet done such a metapackage. Maybe its because those users knowing the packages like the fine-grained control and therefore don't require a big metapackage?
I also think that the large amount of research users naturally leads to many smaller packages that are formed in a bottom up process and therefore are quite inhomogeneous. In my opinion it would need two ingredients to improve on this front - It would be good to find areas, where there are many smaller incompatible packages that would benefit from a unification/reorganization. - In my opinion it would also need some popularity system that makes it dead simple to know, which is the standard package for a common task and which is much more experimental. Maybe it could also work trying to make a top down analysis: What are the 10 main packages a user could search for? Best Tobias Am Montag, 1. August 2016 17:36:56 UTC+2 schrieb Steven Sagaert: > > When I say "work well together" I don't just mean that their versions > technically work together without errors, but also that they match > stylistically and that the datastructures that they expect as input/output > match so that no excessive translation and/or copying of data is needed > which is bad for performance and style. That kind of discussion is for > example happening in OCAML to come to a platform and how to resolve the > ocaml standard lib vs Jane street lib schism. > > On Monday, August 1, 2016 at 5:19:17 PM UTC+2, Steven Sagaert wrote: >> >> I think the most important part of it is the idea of having a second >> (beyond the standard lib that comes with the runtime) larger, optional >> layer of curated libs that are known to work together. That together with >> the metapackage idea for easy inclusion ( maybe with possible overrides as >> in the Rust proposal) would be very handy for people who do not do Julia >> coding all the time and hence cannot follow the larger package ecosystem >> closely. People who do not want this second layer could still just use the >> standard lib + whatever packages they want. One could even extend this to >> multiple layer, each one more optional and lighter curated: standard lib -> >> platform light -> extended paltform -> ... >> >> Now there is already a good attempt in the julia ecosystem to group >> related packages in webpages and try to avoid too much libraries that do >> the same or partially overlap (more like scientific Python, rather than the >> R jungle) and that's great, but per group there still are several >> competing packages and sometimes it's unclear from the descriptions to pick >> a clear winner. A curated subset of these "the platform" by the community >> that adrresses the most common needs except maybe for special niches, would >> be very helpful. That's all :) >> >> On Monday, August 1, 2016 at 4:33:24 PM UTC+2, Stefan Karpinski wrote: >>> >>> There's a fair amount of discussion of the Rust Platform proposal over >>> here: >>> >>> https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/proposal-the-rust-platform/3745 >>> >>> In short there's a lack of agreement to this in Rust. Moreover, in Rust, >>> different versions of libraries are much more closely locked to each other, >>> whereas in Julia the coupling is much looser. Steven, since you're in favor >>> of this idea, can you explain why you think it's a good idea for Julia? >>> What problems does it solve? >>> >>> On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 7:31 AM, Tony Kelman <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> The vision I personally have for this would be something more like SUSE >>>> Studio (https://susestudio.com/) where it's just a few clicks, or a >>>> configuration file in the build system, that could give you a set of >>>> default-installed packages of your choosing, and make installers for your >>>> own custom "spins" of a Julia-with-packages distribution. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Monday, August 1, 2016 at 2:08:06 AM UTC-7, Tim Holy wrote: >>>>> >>>>> module MyMetaPackage >>>>> >>>>> using Reexport >>>>> >>>>> @reexport using PackageA >>>>> @reexport using PackageB >>>>> ... >>>>> >>>>> end >>>>> >>>>> Best. >>>>> --Tim >>>>> >>>>> On Monday, August 1, 2016 1:48:47 AM CDT Steven Sagaert wrote: >>>>> > is more than just a webpage with a list of packages... for starters >>>>> the >>>>> > concept of metapackage. >>>>> > >>>>> > On Monday, August 1, 2016 at 10:25:33 AM UTC+2, Tamas Papp wrote: >>>>> > > Maybe you already know about it, but there is a curated list of >>>>> packages >>>>> > > at https://github.com/svaksha/Julia.jl >>>>> > > >>>>> > > On Mon, Aug 01 2016, Steven Sagaert wrote: >>>>> > > > see https://aturon.github.io/blog/2016/07/27/rust-platform/ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>
