You might want to look at packer as well, which can build virtual machines
from an ISO, without any user intaraction. I successfully used it to build
VMs with Linux, OSX and Windows. It can also create vagrant boxes. You can
specify provisioners, e.g. to install R, or a set of R packages, etc. It is
under heavy development, by the same team as vagrant.

Gabor

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 9:03 AM, Philippe GROSJEAN <
Philippe.GROSJEAN@umons.ac.be> wrote:

>
> ..............................................<°}))><........
>  ) ) ) ) )
> ( ( ( ( (    Prof. Philippe Grosjean
>  ) ) ) ) )
> ( ( ( ( (    Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
>  ) ) ) ) )   Mons University, Belgium
> ( ( ( ( (
> ..............................................................
>
> On 21 Mar 2014, at 10:59, Rainer M Krug <Rainer@krugs.de> wrote:
>
> > Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org> writes:
> >
> >> o Roger correctly notes that R scripts and packages are just one issue.
> >>   Compilers, libraries and the OS matter.  To me, the natural approach
> these
> >>   days would be to think of something based on Docker or Vagrant or (if
> you
> >>   must, VirtualBox).  The newer alternatives make snapshotting very
> cheap
> >>   (eg by using Linux LXC).  That approach reproduces a full environemnt
> as
> >>   best as we can while still ignoring the hardware layer (and some
> readers
> >>   may recall the infamous Pentium bug of two decades ago).
> >
> > These two tools look very interesting - but I have, even after reading a
> > few discussions of their differences, no idea which one is better suited
> > to be used for what has been discussed here: Making it possible to run
> > the analysis later to reproduce results using the same versions used in
> > the initial analysis.
> >
> > Am I right in saying:
> >
> > - Vagrant uses VMs to emulate the hardware
> > - Docker does not
> >
> Yes.
>
>
> > wherefore
> > - Vagrant is slower and requires more space
> > - Docker is faster and requires less space
> >
> It depends. For instance, if you run R in VirtualBox under Windows, it may
> run faster depending on the code you run and, say, the Lapack library used.
> On Linux, you typically got R code run in the VM 2-3% slower than natively,
> but In a Windows host, most of my R code runs faster in the VM... But yes,
> you need more RAM.
>
> With Vagrant, you do not need to keep you VM once you don't use it any
> more. Then, disk space is shrunk down to a few kB, corresponding to the
> Vagrant configuration file. I guess the same is true for Docker?
>
> A big advantage of Vagrant + VirtualBox is that you got a very similar
> virtual hardware, no matter if your host system is Linux, Windows or Mac OS
> X. I see this as a good point for better reproducibility.
>
>
> > Therefore, could one say that Vagrant is more "robust" in the long run?
> >
> May be,... but it depends almost entirely how VirtualBox will support old
> VMs in the future!
>
> PhG
>
> > How do they compare in relation to different platforms? Vagrant seems to
> > be platform agnostic, I can develop and run on Linux, Mac and Windows -
> > how does it work with Docker?
> >
> > I just followed [1] and setup Docker on OSX - loos promising - it also
> > uses an underlying VM. SO both should be equal in regards to
> > reproducability in the long run?
> >
> > Please note: I see these questions in the light of this discussion of
> > reproducability and not in regards to deployment of applications what
> > the discussions on the web are.
> >
> > Any comments, thoughts, remarks?
> >
> > Rainer
> >
> >
> > Footnotes:
> > [1]  http://docs.docker.io/en/latest/installation/mac/
> >
> > --
> > Rainer M. Krug
> > email: Rainer<at>krugs<dot>de
> > PGP: 0x0F52F982
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
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