[lsst-dm-stack-users] This just isn't my day

[Chris Walter]

Hi Kian-tat,

> 
>> This all seems pretty painful.
> 
> 	It's not supposed to be that painful, and it's much better than
> it used to be :-).  We should probably have a tool to check system
> prerequisites, which will remove one source of problems.
> 
Right.  Just to be clear I think it is pretty un-painful to install from source now.  It is indeed much better than when I first tried. I was particularly talking about the situation where people can't get the prereqs installed for some reason. Even if he gets it working keeping track of what versions he installed from source etc going into the future is going to be a mess.

>> Is there anyway to setup a Scientific Linux image running in a virtual
>> machine that someone without root access on a restricted host could
>> run in user space?
> 
> 	Yes.  We have talked about a VM distribution of the stack in the
> past.  But we can't go to a VM-*only* (or even container-only)
> distribution, since we want to be able to integrate with users'
> customized Python (and other) environments.  Since we must therefore
> have a source distribution mechanism, the VM distribution mechanism has
> been on hold until resources become available.
> 

Yes, I certainly wouldn't want a container/VM only situation.  

-Chris

> 	As an intermediate step, we had a binary distribution mechanism.
> But I think that fell by the wayside with the latest release.
> 
> 	Everyone please ignore RHL's mention of manifest.remap.  We
> would like to make use of that file a "ultra-power-user-only" thing.
> 
> -- 
> Kian-Tat Lim, LSST Data Management, ktl at slac.stanford.edu