I highly recommend Vagrant. I can set something up for you this week. You add two files: Vagrantfile and bootstrap.sh
Then the user only needs to do: $ cd petsc-dev $ vagrant up -- Downloads minimal image and calls the bootstrap to install all dependencies $ vagrant ssh Even editting the files is synced so you can use whatever crazy editor you like on your system. The best part is you can just install the vagrant-aws or vagrant-digitalocean plugins and then the same commands will put you on a server in the cloud. -- Andy On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 3:06 PM, Jed Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > Satish Balay <[email protected]> writes: > >> A simple install on windows can be done via cygwin [with gcc/gfortran >> etc.]. A VM will tradeoff installing cygwin with a >> installing/managing/VM+linux > > Installing cygwin is more than one command. > >> The last I checked - a linux VM install with all the required >> developer tools [and a useable minimal X-desktop] takes 2G or more. > > Vagrant wouldn't use a monolithic image. We would just distribute the > Vagrantfile. I don't know what the total download size would work out > to, but we wouldn't be the ones hosting it. > >> We would be in account-management game instead here. Jed was >> previously proposing having the above image available on amazon - and >> users would just run instances of it the way they need it.. > > Amazon will host machine images. Users create an instance and choose > the machine image. It's pretty easy if you want to use their hardware.
