[Neurodebian-devel] fresh wheezy-based NeuroDebian VM images (todo or not todo)?

[Yaroslav Halchenko]

On Thu, 10 Jan 2013, Yury V. Zaytsev wrote:

> On Thu, 2013-01-10 at 13:32 -0500, Yaroslav Halchenko wrote:

> > btw -- have a look at https://github.com/jedi4ever/veewee/ besides
> > being written in Ruby (and there is no neat debian package yet) -- it
> > might be a replacement for our ad-hoc script for different VM images
> > generation since it accomplishes our workflow, just in a systematic
> > way.  If only could it be extended to generate live images as
> > well... ? ;) 

> Hi Yaroslav,
> This looks very interesting...
> I'm opinionated about Vagrant, which I consider to be a
> buzzword-propelled superfluous entity (discover the Clone function of
> VirtualBox!),

yes and no.  Idea behind vagrant is very simple and sound but because of that it
is obvious (now) and might be not clear -- why to bother?

the tandem of a base VM image(s) + provisioning via puppet/chef is quite
useful for many scenarios e.g. (if we divert from all webfarms) by
providing a minimalistic specification (in text files) of how to alter
the base box to achieve a specific configuration.... now think about
reproducibility -- asking people to share an entire VM -- somewhat too
much.  Asking them to share a few text files where you outline your
specs -- might fly.

Moreover -- sharing... vagrant .box is a bit more than .ova -- it might
contain already additional provisioning and setup  (e.g. ports
forwarding etc), making it all nice.

so altogether -- is it groundbreaking invention?  NO.  But it is a quite
well done integration of existing technologies to address a variety  of
usage schemes.

> but if this tool doesn't really depend on it and is able
> to generate images that are generally useful outside its scope (like
> OVA), I'm all for it.

yeah -- it should... although so far I have tried only to use it via
vagrant, but that is what it was distined for originally  -- pure
.ova's.

> I don't care if it is written in an unholy language, as long as I
> personally won't have to hack on it; not having a package in Debian is
> bummer though, because then upgrades are gonna be a PITA.

as long as you stay in Ruby gem/rvmuniverse -- it might be tollerable

-- 
Yaroslav O. Halchenko
Postdoctoral Fellow,   Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Dartmouth College, 419 Moore Hall, Hinman Box 6207, Hanover, NH 03755
Phone: +1 (603) 646-9834                       Fax: +1 (603) 646-1419
WWW:   http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik