Re: reproducibility of numerical experiments

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Paul,

Paul Garlick <pgarlick@tourbillion-technology.com> skribis:

> There were two questions on the day:
>
> i) Q: what happens if a repository disappears?  Is the environment
> still reproducible?
>    A: Yes.  The Software Heritage Project provides a backup of all Guix
> packages.  This is automatically used as a fallback, if needed.
>
> ii) Q: Suppose I am an end user who wishes to include some third-party
> python package, do I require it to exist as a Guix package to be able
> to have the "exact" reproducibility you described?
>      A: There is a useful feature that allows a local channel to be
> defined.  One can keep extra packages and one’s own solvers in the
> local channel.  These are not visible in the main Guix repository but
> have all the same features regarding reproducibility.

OK.

>> Is the FenICS community generally aware of reproducible deployment
>> issues?
>
> Yes, reproducible deployment is seen as desirable, though difficult to
> achieve with the currently-used tools.  Typically model development
> starts on a local workstation and is scaled-up to an HPC system when
> needed.  Tools such as singularity are often used.  However, the local
> and remote installations may differ and as a consequence applications
> that run on the local system may not run on the remote system.
>
>> It’s great to reach out to the numerical simulation community.
>> Reproducible deployment and numerical simulation are two links in the
>> long chain of reproducible science that we have to connect.
>
> Sure.  My view is that Guix provides the machinery to transform what
> can be a stop-start mode of numerical model development to something
> that is more sustainable over time.

Interesting, thank you!

Ludo’.