Re: [PATCH] gnu: r: Update to 3.3.1.

[Pjotr Prins]

On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 01:49:00PM -0400, myglc2 wrote:
> > I think what you're looking for in your hospital research lab is what
> > Pjotr describes as a certain check-out of the Guix source tree.
> 
> But it is not simple to use. It is to technical an approach to appeal to
> the medical researchers I have worked with.

If it is that bad :) You have a choice of fixating the source (what I
do) or the binaries (see below).

> Guix has marvelous raw tools to do anything. The question is how to make
> it simple enough for someone that is basically an R user to take
> advantage of them.  The challenge in guix R packaging is to consider R
> patterns of use and determine how guix packate R to support them in a
> way that is accessible to typical R users.

What you need is a 'managed' environment for your users. My suggestion
is not to give guix daemon access to those users. Use Unix modules -
which I have packaged - to point them to a prepared profile. When they
want to use R, just make a profile. All modules do is set the PATHS,
as Roel described. Technology older than the Linux kernel :/

The 'manager' is the only one who will upgrade and test software to
run. That way you can do controlled upgrades. You can even have
multiple modules for different R's.

You are lucky you can run Guix daemon on your servers. Others build on
VMs and copy the files into shared storage. That also fixates the
binaries.

Pj.