[pkg-bioc] Hello!

[elw at stderr.org]

>> I used the script to build a set of packages here locally - on machines 
>> running debian unstable.  I had a user who wanted the taskPR package 
>> and its dependencies, so I built them.  ;)
>
> Well, in such a case, he could just use CRAN, right?


Users are a bit lazy sometimes.


>> I should probably invest some more time into that.  Enough of us here 
>> use R that I can justify it.
>
> Where is "here"? The University where you study/work?


Indiana University, in Bloomington.  We are in the School of Library and 
Information Science, but we have users float into our space from 
Informatics, CS, structural biology / biocomplexity, education, 
linguistics, and a number of other fairly strange disciplinary siblings.
Mostly because we have one faculty member who is a very gifted statistics 
instructor and who likes R.  ;-)


>> [I'd totally dig it if someone looked into generating .pkg files for 
>> blastwave, too...]
>
> I didn't know this existed until I just looked up their website. What's 
> the main advantage over Debian Linux in your opinion?


The main advantage is that I have some large Solaris machines that have to 
be maintained.  ;)  Generally by the time people need horsepower, they 
have either the skills or the staff to build packages of things that they 
need.  [This is fairly unusual, though - most "researchers" are not so 
interested in being tidy.  So I do a lot of that hand-holding myself.]


>>> We don't yet. We also think 'all to Debian' is to massive. Maybe one 
>>> day after we have a bit of a track record and more experience outside 
>>> of it. I am sure we will find repo space somewhere -- as you said, 
>>> possibly even on CRAN.
>>
>> I have space and most probably the bandwidth here, but I'm afraid that the
>> project would die after I leave the university.  [I have to graduate
>> eventually, ya know...]
>
> Good luck with that!


I'll try.  We ordered some more disk today, so... ;)

[One wishes that Apple would convert the XRaid hardware to use SATA disks, 
so that one could fill an XRaid with the 750GB drives that are about to 
hit the market...]


--e