Re: Pkgsrc binary packages now available for scientific computing

[Jason Bacon <bacon%uwm.edu@localhost>]

Binary pkgsrc packages are now available for 2017Q2.

Supported platforms: (*)

o    RHEL/CentOS 6 and 7
o    Darwin 15 and 16
o    NetBSD 7.1

* The pkgsrc project supports most popular POSIX compatible operating 
systems.  The list above refers only to those for which we provide 
quarterly binary packages.

New this quarter:

o    All RHEL/CentOS 6 packages are built using GCC 4.8, rather than the 
stock GCC 4.4.
o    Numerous packages have been fixed, including octave 4.2.
o    Many upgrades, bug fixes, and enhancements since 2017Q1.

Cheers,

    Jason

On 06/01/17 15:04, Jason Bacon wrote:
> The University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee research computing group is 
> now providing binary pkgsrc packages suitable for use in scientific 
> computing.
>
> For those who are not familiar, pkgsrc is a cross-platform package 
> manager analogous to Debian packages, FreeBSD ports, MacPorts, 
> Portage, Yum, etc.
>
> The pkgsrc system was originally developed by the NetBSD community and 
> like most NetBSD code, portability is one of the primary goals.  In 
> addition to NetBSD, many other POSIX platforms such as RHEL/CentOS, 
> Mac OS X, Solaris, and other BSD and Linux platforms are well supported.
>
> The pkgsrc collection currently contains over 17,000 packages and is 
> growing fast.
>
> We have been using pkgsrc for many years on our CentOS systems to 
> deploy the latest open source software.
>
> As a service to the community, we are now performing bulk builds for 
> each quarterly pkgsrc release.  The binary packages generated by these 
> builds can be installed in seconds, as opposed to the many hours 
> required to build large packages such as GCC from source.  We are 
> currently performing bulk builds for CentOS 6 and 7, Mac OS X El 
> Capitan, and NetBSD 7.1.
>
> Unlike most package collections, which are continuously updated, our 
> pkgsrc collections are snapshots that will remain unaltered, except 
> for occasional new package additions, bug fixes, or security 
> enhancements.  Hence, they are suitable for long-term studies where 
> results must be replicated faithfully over many years.
>
> Full details are available on our website:
>
>     http://uwm.edu/hpc/software-management/
>
> Suggestions and contributions are more than welcome.
>
> We hope that many researchers will find these packages valuable for 
> their work.

--

-------------------------------------
  Jason W. Bacon
  Systems Manager
  Research Computing Support
  University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
  bacon%uwm.edu@localhost
-------------------------------------