Hi Guys,

I just wanted to announce that I have set up an overlay for scientific 
applications in Gentoo. This is something ribosome and I discussed quite some 
time ago, and I recently set up an SVN repository and a trac site for it.

http://gentooscience.org/

Our two herd testers and I have commit access to it right now. Any other 
science herd members are welcome to accounts (please email me off list to get 
it set up). It is in the early stages and so I am open to suggestions.

I was considering the possibility of using a repo specific keyword in ebuilds 
such as ~sci so that any herd testers and/or users can add that to their 
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS in /etc/make.conf (as well as maintaining normal keyword 
practices). The intention is to add stuff to the repo for testing before it 
is ready to go into portage. Some stuff that we just can't maintain for 
whatever reason could possibly end up in their more permanently too.

It provides a great way to train herd testers in a safer (than the main 
portage tree) repository and develop ebuilds more interactively. Once stuff 
is moved into the portage tree it should of course be deleted from the 
repository.

I would welcome any feedback you guys might have. It is pretty easy to check 
out a copy of it and keep it up to date - I put instructions on the site. Be 
warned that the ebuilds in the overlay will generally be more experimental 
and may need work. Tickets can be opened for ebuilds in the overlay, but new 
ebuilds and bugs on ebuilds in portage should still be reported in the normal 
way through bugzilla. When ebuilds are added to the overlay the bug will have 
a comment added with words to that effect.

Thanks,

Marcus