2009/10/13 William Stein <wst...@gmail.com>: > > On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 3:53 AM, David Kirkby <drkir...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Oct 12, 8:27 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 6:58 AM, Dr. David Kirkby >> >>> > Most of the problems in Sage are not at the shell level. >>> >>> Yes, but the problems that have been discussed so far in this thread >>> are. Also, busybox was proposed as a way of dealing with the >>> problems that are at the shell level. Discussing compiler issues is >>> totally orthogonal to the entire rest of this thread. >> >> Another issue to consider is whether asking Solaris users to use a GNU- >> like environment is likely to backfire, and them lose interest in >> helping in a port to Solaris. When I asked on comp.unix.solaris for >> some help porting Sage, someone contacted me and said he was >> interested, but only if Sun compilers were used, not GNU. When I >> pointed out that realistically the most sensible thing to do was to >> get Sage working with gcc relieably first, then use the Sun compilers, >> he was simply not interested. I was hoping to contact him again once >> >> http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/6579 >> >> is resolved. Iit's not a fix I feel confident doing properly, so I'd >> rather someone else did that one. I believe is is the single most >> important fix of all those I've submitted. William is probably the >> best person, as he understands this bit of code, not me. >> >> I somewhat doubt the other person who contacted me would be interested >> in using a GNU shell environment, giving he reluctance to work with >> gcc! I believe once >> >> http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/6579 >> >> is resolved, there is a good chance of getting some help from other >> Solaris users. Tell them that they must use a GNU shell, and not a Sun >> one is likely to have a detrimental effect. >> >> Couple that, with the fact the code would almost certainly get less >> testing on Solaris, and I see it a recipe to kill off a Solaris port, >> not improve one. >> >>> Using Python (or busybox or whatever) for spkg-install's is not the >>> answer to *all* portability issues. But it is a very good answer to >>> some of them. >>> >>> William >> >> Maybe, but maybe it would have the dead opposite effect to what you >> think. > > That's a great argument. Unfortunately, you can make exactly the same > argument with respect to asking Windows/Linux/OS X developers to use a > POSIX-only environment. "Another issue to consider is whether asking > Windows/Linux/OS X users to use a POSIX-only environment is likely to > backfire, and them lose interest in helping in a port (or maintenance) > on Windows/Linux/OS X." > > William
For Unix/Linux environments, perhaps a sensible solution could be summed up in two or perhaps three sentances. 1) Ensure you respect all environment variables. 2) Check it works on all supported operating systems using GCC as a compiler. 3) Check it works on Cygwin, since a port to this is planned. I personally do not think that is an unreasonable request. One of the main justifications for this is that bugs often show on one platform and not another, even though they are not portability issues. 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
