[MINC-development] Welcome

[Jason Lerch]

Hi all,

(firstly: it appears that the default reply to goes to the sender of
the message and not the list - can that be easily changed?)

I have some minor comments to add to that list - but thanks for
getting the discussion started!

One item to add to the wishlist:

* better binary distribution of the MINC toolkit. I've just started on
  creating rpms, tardists, etc., but the whole process should be more
  automated (modificiation of the makefiles/autoconiscation structure)
  and extended to everything that we are giving away.

Some comments about the other bits you've listed:

> 3. MINC requires extensions to support files larger than core.
> 4. MINC requires extensions to support files larger than 2 GB.

There are really two issues here: extensions to the core libraries
which allow for just that, and a check of the code-base of the
existing tools to make sure that they are using those libraries
correctly. For example, the various algorithms within INSECT rely on
their own library which is a) a pain in the arse to build and b) not
currently capable of dealing with large volumes. So even if the
prerequisite changes were made to MINC and volume_io, you'd still have
to go into at least those bits of code to ensure that they rely on
MINC and not just pull everything into memory in a different array
structure.


> 5. MINC requires extensions to run on 64-bit architectures.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by extensions - the only work to be
done is to check the code for incorrect assumptions about the sizes of
pointers, ints, etc. And while I have started that, I have not been
proceeding in any sort of rigorous fashion, but rather just trying to
patch problems as I run into them. So I suppose this will integrate
nicely with a thorough test suite.

Cheers,

Jason