I always found that to be a little weird. Why is scientific projects that dependent on even minor version changes?
Isn’t that normally an indication that there’s something horribly wrong in your code?
Isn’t that normally an indication that there’s something horribly wrong in your code?
This might be a poor example, but lets say an error was found in a computation in a library, for example a rounding error or something, in that case, more often than not, the community will rather live with the known error and have consistency instead.
Luckily containers have become quite popular in the HPC world, to isolate such 'tricky' applications from the host OS.
Over the cause of one experiment sure, I can see why you’d like to know the calculation are done identically. I just question the validity/usefulness of a calculation that can only be repeated on one version of some library. Surely the overall result should remain the same.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge_factor
A good portion of experimentalists' time is probably spent in trying to figure just how badly they've messed their experiments as compared to reality. Major discoveries are sometimes based on teasing apart those differences:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon_g-2
In my EE studies we had a specific course just in examining the limitations of (digital) numbers:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_analysis
* https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.h...