[OpenIndiana-discuss] Scientific Software for OpenIndiana

[Bryan Iotti]

Excellent idea!

Myself, I use the R statistics software, ImageJ and MIPAV, but I'd really
like the ease of use of searching for an IPKG package and downloading it...

Nowadays I find I mainly look for java apps for the ease of portability.

R is available, although old, from CSW.



Bryan


On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 6:16 PM, Aurélien Larcher <
aurelien.larcher at gmail.com> wrote:

>
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> Hi,
> I would like to enquire whether someone would be interested in
> developing some kind of scientific software packaging initiative ?
>
> I am a post-doc researcher in applied and computational math and I am
> using OpenIndiana on my workstation and personal computing nodes.
> To the question "Why ?", I would reply that it's mainly about having the
> possibility to setup a RAIDZ on the workstation and then benefiting from
> better data "safety" (few horror/corruption stories with ext3...), using
> snapshots for my data sets and results, as well as the possibility to
> rollback if a new version of numerical libraries breaks something (or
> even just an upgrade).
> Another good point is the good support of Nvidia graphic cards and the
> fact that something on the system is not breaking after every single
> upgrade...
>
> To this regard OpenIndiana is a very good working environment for a
> researcher.
> The main drawback is that it requires lots of "manual" installations
> which any researcher/engineer cannot afford.
> Before considering using optimized libraries, one is mainly concerned
> about just doing his research work :)
>
> As the compilation and upgrade of numerical libraries and application
> tends to be tedious and as I need to upgrade PETSc and friends, I am
> taking the time now to package any software I am using at work.
>
> I am currently packaging TeXLive, LaTeX Gedit plugin, Scilab, Paraview
> and linear algebra and PDE solver software which have been using in the
> past years.
>
> I am using pkgbuild and SFE and here is a link to a sandbox where I
> started pushing spec files I wrote this week:
>
> https://bitbucket.org/alarcher/oi-scientific/wiki/Home
>
> Related to this, I have then few questions:
>
> - - What can be a good way to collaborate on packaging scientific software
> ?
> - - Should we provide the packages through the OI SFE repository or a
> separate one ? Then how ?
> - - Should we focus on using GCC 4.6.3 provided by SFE ? (I personally
> don't have the time to handle SUNCC gotchas if any :S)
> - - Where should the "OI Scientific" project by hosted ?
> - - How should we handle dependencies to OI packages ? (for instance Ant
> from OI is too old for some software I am using).
>
> Moreover, if there are enough people interested I would advocate having
> a system similar to Debian Sciences with few maintainer per package and
> for each a separate repository with spec files, copyright, patches,
> etc... (something like Redmine ?).
>
> So if you are interested in a joint effort in that direction, I would be
> glad to hear you suggestions.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Aurélien
>
>
>
>
>
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