EHN: user installs to be done in a persistent directory

[bsipocz]

If the default user install path would show to a persistent directory it would ultimately be a nicer user experience, see:

nasa-fornax/fornax-demo-notebooks#347 (comment)

The downside, of course, is that package installs will take up valuable space, but I suppose we can trust/instruct users to maintain their installations well.

(And this is also point to #15 so we don't duplicate packages at user level site-packages directories, but provide them centrally)

[zoghbi-a]

As you point out, installing packages in the user space will quickly deplete their storage and bloat the backup. The best way to handle this for now is to make as much of the required software available as part of the system. I think we have most of them now in the Dev image.

[bsipocz]

I don't mean this to be included in any backups. (Also, why do we need backups?). What about defaulting the location to somewhere under efs/?

[zoghbi-a]

The efs/ is a temporary sharing solution. it is not meant for production.

For backup, it is part of our requirement that the home space is backed up at regular intervals. Installing software there means it will be added to the backup.

I am currently at Roman Platform workshop, and we are having exactly this discussion. They are trying to answer this question too.

[bsipocz]

The efs/ is a temporary sharing solution. it is not meant for production.

OK, but eventually there will be a space sharing solution, or some non-backuped place, I suppose. So all custom installs can land there and be persistent.