Hey folks, the survey has been running for a few days now and we have had 46
respondents. While I expect some more people to take the survey, I don't
expect the results to change too much. You can find the survey questions
here <http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=MJKdOtMGh_2bGB5zO9ZBlFWA_3d_3d>;
it remembers your responses, so in addition to reading through the
questions, you can change them if you like. If you took the survey right
when it came out then there's some chance that new questions were added.
You can go back and answer those questions now, if you want.
Without further ado, the results:
Respondents: 46
1. Which of these best describes your use of PDL?
- 22 => 48% - use PDL on a regular basis
- 9 => 20% - regularly use PDL via a script, bu otherwise don't use
PDL much
- 5 => 11% - don't use PDL anymore
- 4 => 9% - couldn't get PDL to install
- 6 => 13% - think it might be useful but can't figure it out
2. Should PDL be light an nimble or large and feature-full?
- 20 => 48% - light
- 22 => 52% - feature-full
3. How difficult was PDL to install?
- 13 => 28% - easy
- 20 => 44% - minor trouble
- 14 => 30% - major difficulties
- 5 => 11% - never actually got it to install
- Respondents were able to indicate what gave them trouble; these
responses are listed at the bottom of these results.
4. How have you installed PDL?
- 20 => 44% - compiled from source
- 29 => 63% - through CPAN
- 7 => 15% - PPM
- 17 => 37% - OS's package manager
- 2 => 4% - SciKarl
5. Would you like to see a Windows installer?
- 13 => 28% said yes
- 25 => 72% said no or don't care
6. More interactive CPAN installer?
- 21 => 47% said yes
- 24 => 53% said no or don't care
7. How could PDL be best improved?
- 6 => 13% - Better guidance for beginners
- 8 => 17% - Better documentation
- 3 => 7% - GPU support
- 1 => 2% - easily integrate with C-code (sanity check question, how
readily to people know about PDL::PP)
- 8 => 17% - out-of-the-box plotting capabilities
- 2 => 4% - minimal footprint
- 9 => 20% - hassle-free CPAN installation
- 2 => 4% - packaged with my OS's package manager
- 7 => 15% - other
- GUI like Matlab has
- De-bundle it. I'd like PDL::Lite to be an easily-installable
module that doesn't depend on any graphics libraries. It
would be great to
have and I wouldn't mind having it as a dependency on my
applications or
modules. Also, I think that interactive CPAN installation is
a bad idea, as
it hinders batch automatic installing of several modules; and
most often
than not it's confusing for users.
- provide basic Matrix arithmetic features without depending on
other packages
- more straightforward/complete complex numbers integration
- A better editor integration - e.g. with Emacs/Eclipse etc.
- all of above! or C-code integration if need to choose one
- All of the above excepting the C-Coding.
Respondents listed the following as Installation problems:
- PLPLOT and HDF wouldn't install on Mac OS X
- I had to run the installer before I got a clear sense of the required
external libraries that I had to install.
- 1. Dependencies
2. use PDL; fails with use warnings fatal => qw (all);
Point 4 below: downloaded packages and followed by-hand instructions.
Ended up writing an install script.
- did not work with the default installation of perl; needed to install
perl-devel.
- I put my sysadmin through this, and didn't install myself. The biggest
problems were the HDF hooks, and PGPLOT. I looked at the PLPLOT install and
didn't even ask my techs to attempt that.
- On any new (Linux) system, getting all the dependencies and header
files that I need requires multiple Makefile.PL iterations.
- I had lots of trouble trying to install from CPAN. No less than two
hours of painful scrolling through cpan error logs, and googling around for
answers. finally I got it installed, but only after serious determination on
my part.
- On a CentOS 5 machine, I did have to install PGPLOT manually, of
course, and had to install the code manually but a lot of that was for a
non-root installation. On Ubuntu, everything but PGPLOT seemed to install
with very difficulty.
But I want to add that I really like using PGPLOT, so I wanted to put up
with its problems.
- crapping out on PLPLOT and PGPLOT builds
- MS-Windows was the worst platform. Have many compilers but different
parts needed GNU stuff and others Visual-C. Number of dependencies too large
for successful build - always 1 that would break.
- Proper finding and linking of libraries (especially PGPLOT, but also
GSL and some others) under Mac OS 10.6. Ugh.
- I became a PDL developer to get things to work.
- Multiple troubles, a nightmare to install
- - PGplot hard to install on cygwin
- installing TriD
- dependencies, glitches with selection of fortran compilers, weirdness
of PGPLOT installation
- Missing libraries, dependency trouble, compability issues
- Sorry, can't remember. Likely external dependency stuff.
- recommended libraries were not available at install time
- FORTRAN dependencies and GSL dependency on Windows. Some modules never
installed due to lack of external dependency, but I don't use those modules
so it doesn't matter.
- Installing needed libraries and helper programs (e.g. PGPLOT) not easy.
- Couldn't get it to recognize/use my opengl install.
- On Windows, it wasn't until recently that I could get the PGPLOT or any
PDL plotting to work. On the Linux side I use Ubuntu and it seemed to work
without any issues. I am still on 2.4.3 though.
- most difficulty on Mac OS X, especially regarding
graphics packages (pgplot, plplot).
- After installing (under Windows) even some trivial example code gave
errors, which I could not resolve. The ActiveState ppm probably is
incomplete.
I will not (learn to) develop in PDL if much of the features do not work
out of the box.
So those are the results for now. How do you think we should interpret
these numbers? What do you think these numbers and responses tell us about
where future development for PDL should be headed?
David
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