On 04/ 1/11 09:53 AM, Robert Bradshaw wrote:
+1, to all of the above.
What I was trying to say is that we should focus on getting the (very
sophisticated and useful) code to compile and work again, rather than
complain about the number of compiler warnings it gives. Getting it
into a public repository would be a great step forward for those who
care about cross-platform compatibility and compiler workings to
contribute.
- Robert
A possible (probable?) problem will be that it will be very difficult for
someone to know what changes to make. The current lcalc code in Sage is not
valid C++, so trying to know what the author intended would be difficult and I
feel attempting to clean it up would be more likely to break the code than
improve it.
BTW, what is the full name of the author? SPKG.txt says "Rishikesh", yet people
here talk of "Risi" and "Mike".
I've fixed many portability issues in the past, when it was clear what the
author intended and one can see his mistakes. This is probably not so with
'lcalc' - at least based on what I can see just now.
Obviously if revised code is much better then it may be possible for someone to
clean it up further.
Sympow was another case similar. I don't think anyone could clean up Sympow, as
it's not valid C, so hard to know what the author was trying to do. I only
managed to fix a bug in that as a result of finding a reference to a paper,
reading the paper, then I was able to work out what the author intended. But I
believe cleaning up Sympow would be dangerous rather than constructive.
The big advantage here with lcalc is the author is still available, although
busy just now. It might be safer to leave him to do it. If the Sun compiler was
installed, this would give him the chance to turn it into valid C++. Then it
would be much more maintainable.
Dave
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