[redwolfb14]

"One possible reason I dreaded was that nobody had previously built something like CDE because it was impossible to get the details right to make it work effectively in practice. Maybe it was one of those ideas that looked good on paper but wasn't practically feasible"

No, there was autopackage, alien and any numerous other programs and battles/discussion long email threads that worked not just for python but for any language. Technically speaking as I see CDE, it is useful for python and standard installs in very select cases. For large research projects where the variables and runtimes will differ with no rhyme or reason other than "That's what we started with". It's probably a lot more of an issue to get running properly.

I'm sure there is no easy answer, it's really a human problem. What would really be highly useful is for standardization on a linux distro specifically for research but even then that would only be useful for at most an organization/institution/research lab. Getting researchers to stick to such a distro as a general rule is impossible without weapons.

[redwolfb14]

Also, good read.