[Debian-med-packaging] environment modules for Debian Med

[Vincent Danjean]

Le 16/09/2015 15:42, Afif Elghraoui a écrit :
> +1 for environment modules. I wanted to bring this up for a long time (I
> didn't know it's been suggested before). It might be better brought up
> on -devel since this is something that can help Debian as a whole, in my
> opinion.

I'm not so convinced. I really like to be able to
"apt-get install install foo" and start to use foo because I know
it has been integrated with all other software.
  I would not welcome the requirement to do
"module enable foo" as a user if I want to use foo.
Moreover, if there are conflicts/dependency/provides/... between modules
(and they will be if modules are used intensively), this will lead
to a big machinery where we replicate the apt resolver.
  Moreover, if there are dependencies due to the user workflow
(ie a user configure a program to run another one) and not due to
internal module work, theses dependencies wont be
described into modules metadata (make will not have a dependency on
all programs that can be run in a Makefile). So the user will have to
deal itself with the integration of these modules, which can be
tricky (the apt resolver is tricky)

  For me, using environment modules *at a distribution level* means
that we failed to correctly integrate the packaged software in Debian.

  That said, I think that environment modules can be useful
*at a user or sysadmin level* but that is another story. I would also
very welcome relocatable Debian packages that a user would be able to
install without being root...

  Regards,
    Vincent

> I may volunteer to consider its implementation. I just have several
> packages I'm trying to create and I still need to update you all on the
> automatic backports system.
> 
> regards
> Afif
> 
>