Re: [gentoo-alt] RFC: Slides for Computing in High Energy Physics

[Benda Xu]

Hi Guilherme,
Cc All,

@all, guys, if you have some nice screenshots of Gentoo on Android,
please send me to be included in my slides.

I have uploaded my revised slides as,

  http://hep.tsinghua.edu.cn/~orv/Gentoo-BendaXu-CHEP.pdf

Guilherme Amadio <amadio@g.o> writes:

> On Mon, Nov 04, 2019 at 12:04:25AM +0800, Benda Xu wrote:
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I am going to give an oral presentation at the Computing in High Energy
>> Physics Conference at Adelaide Australia on Tuesday:
>>
>>   https://indico.cern.ch/event/773049/sessions/323858/#20191105
>>
>> I have uploaded my slides at,
>>
>>   http://hep.tsinghua.edu.cn/~orv/pd/chep2019.pdf
>>
>>
>> Note that there will be talks on Spack and Conda after mine. A
>> head-to-head comparison in the session will be likely to happen.
>
> You can see their slides ahead of time. I think they are all posted
> already, in case you want to make a comparison in your talk.
>
>> Comments welcome!
>
> Here are my comments for the slides:
>
> For the theme, I like the darker purple. See here an example from when
> I first presented Portage in a group meeting here:
> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dYyYL4L9i4g6WibYpsJqL__dqD3w3KZmQKFkw40SanU/edit?usp=sharing
> This is just a suggestion, though. Your theme is totally fine.

Changed the color.  Always interesting to try out new themes.

> Slide 3:
>
> There is a typo: maintenability -> maintainability

Done.

> Slide 4:
>
> from daily to ... -> from daily use to ...

I think the original is OK, regarding "daily" and "scientific" as
counterparts.

> Slide 5:
>
> I think this is a key slide. It shows the main difference between
> prefix and others, namely, that the INTERP points into EPREFIX and
> makes it independent. Important points are that it doesn't require
> sourcing any setup scripts to use, neither setting any variables.
> You should point that out, and say that we can only do this because
> of the special glibc that we build. No other package manager does
> that as far as I can tell. Also, you can use the same prefix on
> CVMFS for Ubuntu, CentOS, etc, instead of having one prefix per host
> system. That's another great advantage that prefix has over everything
> else.

Very nice point!  I have rewritten the points.

> Slide 6:
>
> For CMake, it should be cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="$EPREFIX" ...

Done

> Slide 7:
>
> Rust Carge -> Rust Cargo

Fixed.

> I'd avoid bundling the stuff that doesn't exist yet with the ones that
> already exist. Maybe it's better to put them only in the next slide
> and say that it would be possible to have converters for some things.
> Spack and conda seem quite unfeasible, though, so I wouldn't list those.
> Spack uses python for recipes, and shares the same recipe for all versions
> of a given package. See the recipe for ROOT, which was based on my ebuild:
> https://github.com/spack/spack/blob/6e78730a9776e310e375fa4697aae828665af85f/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/root/package.py
> Not sure about conda, but it's more like apt/rpm, so converters are
> probably not an option, or at least very hard not to make a mess, since
> packages will be duplicated in both worlds.

Agreed.  I have deleted the Conda and Spack statements.

> Another thing is that spack and spack-dev are somewhat different things.
> The spack-dev thing is supposed to be something to help work on package
> development by creating a dev environment where you can work on the
> source and use spack to install. (Think like using ebuild configure,
> then work on the source, then ebuild compile/install/qmerge by hand.)

s/SpackDev/Spack/

> Non-exist, ... -> Do not exist yet, ...

Done

> Slide 8:
>
> Please point to packages.gentoo.org :-) It's a great resource.  It lists
> the number of packages in the front page, so you could just put a
> screenshot in your slide and make it a link to the site. Same for the
> categories, you can link to https://packages.gentoo.org/categories and
> use a screenshot.

Done. I have used the front page.

> Not sure about what you mean with the red box (Our manifesto). It can
> probably be removed.

Replaced the read box with a sentence.

> Slide 10:
>
> Maybe try using minted for getting syntax hilighting, and put the code
> in listing boxes. I can send you examples if you want. It will look a
> lot nicer!

I added some backgroud to it. Indded it looks nicer.

> Slide 11:
>
> Coexistance -> Coexistence
>
> This is also an important slide. Here there is a combinatorial build
> with many different versions of everything and then "views" into the
> builds are created by symlinking into the real directories, but that
> has its issues, obviously. Gentoo puts all of userspace into a single
> directory and stacked prefix can be used to share the base and change
> the top while still keeping everything consistent when things are
> updated, which is the important point to make.

I have added several points.

> Slide 12:
>
> This is also a crucial slide, as it explains the bootstrapping process.
> You can probably move it earlier, when you start explaining about
> prefix and put a lot of emphasis on the fact that only the host kernel
> matters, and that we can have one thing that works on any Linux distro,
> as long as the kernel is recent enough. This is something only prefix
> can provide at the moment, and with CVMFS, it's easy to take advantage
> of this benefit.

Nice suggestion.  I have moved it earlier.

> Slide 13:
>
> Maybe use some screenshots from Android? That would be really cool.

Got one from the internet.

> Slide 14:
>
> I think that you don't need to mention other package managers in the
> conclusion. Just focus on the strengths of Portage and prefix in
> combination with a means of distribution like CVMFS (or any distributed
> or networked filesystem). I think that it would be great to see more
> adoption of Gentoo in the scientific community!

Good point.  I will focus on Gentoo.

> The presentation is very good overall, and I'm sure you'll do great
> there presenting Gentoo.

Thanks!
Benda