Re: NSLS-II Debian Repository in 2018

["Konrad, Martin" <konrad@frib.msu.edu>]

Hi Anton,
> as some of you might know, NSLS-II has a public repository for EPICS
>  packages available here:
> 
> http://epics.nsls2.bnl.gov/debian/
Thanks for continuing NSLS-II's efforts to provide binary Debian
packages! At FRIB we have benefited a lot from the work Michael and
others have shared in the past. We are contributing to the source code
of the Debian packages on Github but unfortunately (although we have
tried multiple times) we have not been successful in getting management
approval for sharing our binary packages with the world :-(

> Second, I believe that the repository is an easy way to obtain a 
> working set of software to get started with EPICS, something I 
> greatly benefited from in those times of old.
Working at a university, I also appreciate tools that make it easy to
get others (e.g. students) started quickly. In this context your public
Debian repo is a great help (even for labs that have their own internal
package repo).

> - Are there are any sites/individuals which use the NSLS-II Debian 
> repository for their installations?
AFAIK, FRIB is not using your repo on an everyday basis. However, having
a public repo available, allows us to share test environments with
others (think of Vagrant environments shared with contractors for
example). This also facilitates collaboration between labs.

> - Is there are community effort which is not yet present in epicsdeb
> but can be put there (e.g. FRIB has their internal repository as
> well)?
I push all my changes/new versions to Github (except for FRIB-specific
stuff). I will go over the list of our packages to see if we have
anything that isn't shared on Github, yet.

For the future I think we should try to share the source code of our
build infrastructure. That way we could collaborate on the
infrastructure as well (which also requires quite some effort to set up).

We appreciate the effort you guys are putting into this!

-Martin

-- 
Martin Konrad
High Performance Controls Team Leader
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams
Michigan State University
640 South Shaw Lane
East Lansing, MI 48824-1321, USA
Tel. 517-908-7253
Email: konrad@frib.msu.edu