conda for NCL?

Has anyone made a conda recipe--or better yet, used a conda package--to install NCL? Why I ask:

I'll use pretty much anything (that runs on linux and isn't IDL :-) to solve a given problem. While I don't have enough experience with scientific computing, I have been around computing more generally long enough to believe

1. Linux packaging management systems (e.g., APT) are truly A Powerful Thing, but they (esp APT) eventually cause problems for managing reasonably complex python and R package sets, though they definitely help with managing binary dependencies of those package sets.

2. The various python packaging tools are also powerful things, but are only good for python, and particularly they don't seem to help one to manage the binary dependencies of the packages they manage. (Plus, they are various: tracking the social mobility of setuptools, distribute, easy_install, pip, etc makes my brain hurt :-)

3. R and CRAN provide a pretty minimal PMS compared to python's offerings. (OTOH, they crush NCL WRT packaging.)

4. ICBW about any combination of 1-3 above :-)

So I've definitely been interested to learn more about the Anaconda distro and related tools (notably its 'conda' PMS), which seems to be designed to

1. be agnostic/pantheistic WRT python, R, etc.

2. handle binary dependencies well (and to have learned from `virtualenv`)

3. target multiple OSs

4. just target scientific computing, *not* an app space as large as the linux and mac PMSs must. (Giving one hope that they might achieve the other 3 goals :-)

To date, *conda (== conda, Anaconda, Miniconda, Binstar:Conda, etc) seems to be mostly about python (which I presume many folks on this list are aware, via their work on PyNIO etc), but is spreading beyond its "home world" as evidenced by, e.g.,

https://conda.binstar.org/r/linux-64

which includes R packages=ncdf4, which depends on netCDF-4 binaries, making a nice testcase.

I'm gonna hafta setup another debian box Real Soon Now, which is gonna hafta have NCL, python, and R (et al). ISTM *conda should allow me to handle the latter, and It Would Be Nice if one could also "do NCL" the same way. Hence I'm wondering if anyone has already done work in this direction.

Apologies if this is a FAQ, but a brief/casual DDG+google seemed to find nothing.

TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>
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Received on Sun Mar 30 22:19:28 2014