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imho, he is missing the most important point, and walking in the wrong direction instead. He is true, that science requires recomputation, the ability to verif
by kephra 13y ago
imho, he is missing the most important point, and walking in the wrong direction instead.
He is true, that science requires recomputation, the ability to verify or falsify results. But recomputation in science is more then just the ability to run the black magic box again. A black magic box makes it worse, because the box might change and fail over time, and its black magic VM. Recomputation requires source code, that is human readable.
So my suggestion instead is to use a combination of Gentoo and Linux Containers instead. Gentoo enforces that everything on the machine has its source code that did run through the compiler, and Linux Containers encapsulate the project in a way, that a simple backup can preserve it.
well I normally prefer Debian because of lower maintenance cost. But Gentoo could play out its strength in this edge case.
- CJefferson 13y agoI think both are important. My real hope, in the long term, is that people will package source in the recomputable VM, and recompile it as part of the recomputation. However, particularly when academics are gluing together multiple pieces of software, often which are themselves quite fragile, just trying to reassemble working software can be almost impossible. I have a number of things I wrote myself from when C++11 was first coming out (yes, I possibly shouldn't write software with compilers for unfinished languages, but I like to live on the state of the art). Now C++11 support in gcc is finalised and some corners have been cleaned up, these programs don't compile any more. I know how to fix them, and have. I wouldn't want someone else to have to do that.
- kephra 13y agoLanguages change, their compiler changed, a Gentoo backup would come with sources of the compiler you used to compile your C++11preBeta project also.