[Matrix-SIG] Multipack

[Konrad Hinsen]

> This is a good idea, so do we require availability of f2c or distribute it
> with it?  I guess what you are saying is deliver a set of translated-to-C
> sources with the distribution.  This gets pretty big, the distribution
> will already be quite large.  Perhaps two distributions?  You can either
> download the Fortran only or the C-translated versions?

That could be a solution, but then again the user must know what to
do. Believe it or not, I have had reports of beginning MMTK users who
sent me "weird error messages during installation" which pointed out
nothing else than that there was no C compiler installed! So you can't
even expect some users to know their system installation, although I
hope this is exceptional!

> With the availability of g77 on many platforms (including Windows) is it
> that much of a problem to require a Fortran compiler to compile?  This

If you don't have g77, then installing it is a major task. I know many
scientific users who have workstations without Fortran compilers.
I wish they'd all switch to Linux where life is easy!

But the more important problem is not having a Fortran compiler but
knowing how to link Fortran and C code together, especially in shared
libraries. It took me an hour on some machines to figure out how to do
it, and that with plenty of experience in this business. On some
systems (e.g. DigitalUnix, but that was two years ago) I didn't
succeed at all.

> does not preclude someone from making a binary available for platforms
> that don't have easy-to-install Fortran compilers (e.g. Robert Kern

I don't know how realistic binary distributions are for Unix systems.
They are beginning to be a problem for Linux, with so many
incompatible versions of libc.

> What a company cannot do is change the LGPL'd module, distribute the
> changed module as a binary only, and not release code back to the public.
> I really don't see how this gets in the way of anybody except people who
> don't want to play nicely.

Me neither. But then what is all the fuss about? Some companies seem
to consider GPL/LGPL as an evil worse than Microsoft!

> compiled as separate C-code modules and separate python modules.  There is
> one Python module called Multipack that does nothing but import all of the
> other modules.  This allows one to interact with all the code through
> Multipack or in a more modular fashion according to taste.  

Exactly. I'd prefer to have several modules under Numeric, i.e.
Numeric.MINPACK, Numeric.ODEPACK, etc.  If you keep on adding to
Minpack as it is now, sooner or later there will be a name conflict
between different "packs".

Konrad.
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Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen@cnrs-orleans.fr
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