Impacting the bioscience progress by backporting software for Bio-Linux
This work tackles software availability delays for bioinformatics researchers using Bio-Linux, though it appears incremental as it applies an existing software method to a specific domain.
The paper addresses the problem of Bio-Linux's 2-year release cycle causing outdated bioinformatic software, proposing backporting as a solution to integrate new tools and speed up scientific progress.
In year 2006 Bio-Linux with the work of Tim Booth and team gives its rising and provide an operating system that was and still specialized in providing a bioinformatic specific software environment for the working needs in this corner of bioscience. It is shown that Bio-Linux is affected by a 2 year release cycle and with this the final releases of Bio-Linux will not have the latest bioinformatic software on board. The paper shows how to get around this huge time gap and bring new software for Bio-Linux on board through a process that is called backporting. A summary of within the work to this paper just backported bioinformatic tools is given. A describtion of a workflow for continuously integration of the newest bioinformatic tools gives an outlook to further concrete planned developments and the influence of speeding up scientific progress.