Minh Nguyen wrote: > The packages you have updated so far all contain a similar set of > tests at the start of the file spkg-install. To me, those tests look > very much like a template to be used for perhaps all the other spkg's. > It would be very beneficial to package maintainers if those boiler > plate tests are documented somewhere, preferably in the Developers' > Guide. >
I'll do that at some point, but I'd rather not just now, as some of the current code might be redundant now, as the 'configure' script at http://sagetrac.org/sage_trac/ticket/7021 should pick many of the errors up that the spkg-install file current does. For example, do we need to test if there is a mix of GNU and Sun compilers in every spkg-install, when it is done once in the configure script? There are advantages to doing it twice. * It in 'belt and braces' * If someone sets the Sage environment variable for debugging, and screws up in some way, having the tests in every spkg-install would pick that up. It is more robust. But also disadvantages too: * If one wanted to improve on the tests, doing it only in the configure script would mean there was no need to update every single spkg-install. * It makes the spkg-install file much longer. Currently the configure script I wrote, is far from perfect. It does not pick up some possible errors with the Fortran compiler, which is complicated by three problems. * We use the odd variable SAGE_FORTRAN to specify the Fortran compiler. Had we used FC, the normal autoconf configure scripts would all use that. (Any chance we change to use 'FC' instead of SAGE_FORTRAN ?) * gfortran does not support an option to output just the version number, like gcc and g++ do. I reported that as a bug in gfortran, which a gfortran developer fixed. But it does not help with older versions of gfortran. (I might be able to test the gfortran version by greping the output of 'gfortran --version' and ensuring it contains the same version of gcc and g++ I noticed that when trying to build Sage with the Sun compiler, an issue I had (SAGE_FORTRAN was set to a GNU compiler), whereas CC and CXX were set to the Sun ones, was not detected in the configure script. But it was detected in the readline spkg-install. I must admit, when playing around setting CC and CXX, I have tended to forget to set SAGE_FORTRAN. So in some ways, the Fortran compiler is the biggest problem. Currently the readline spkg-install file is probably the best one, if we do chose to use my improved spkg-install files. Dave --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
