[MINC-development] Re: time for 1.1?

[Steve ROBBINS]

On Sat, Jan 11, 2003 at 10:21:02PM -0500, Peter NEELIN wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Steve ROBBINS wrote:
> 
> > Since the whole build system has been revamped, I'm making a
> > PRE-release source package available at
> >
> >     www.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/~stever/Software/Prerelease
> 
> This is great!
> 
> One very minor point, but perhaps of interest for historical accuracy:
> MINC development was started in 1992, not 1993

Thanks!  I think I took the dates from the copyright statement in one
of the files.  Clearly, I should have checked more carefully.  For example,
the file "minc.h" says it was created on July 24, 1992 <blush>.  

I'll correct the dates in the files.  If you have any other historical
information to add (minor or otherwise), I'd be delighted to have it included.

 
> A note about minccalc: I tried to make sure that the build would not try
> to run flex or bison unless the sources were changed so that people
> without these tools could still build the package. That is why the
> corresponding .c files are checked in. It is important to ensure that the
> .c files are checked in after the .y and .l files (so that make will
> not see them as out of date) and that the build process will only run flex
> and bison if necessary.

That's a good point.  Here's what happens now.  

1. The configure script will probe for yacc or bison and for lex or flex.
Even if they are not found, the build will succeed.  You will get a diagnostic
if the .c file is out-of-date with respect to the .y file.  Presumably 
this is okay: anyone who is modifying the .y file ought to know that 
yacc is required to rebuild successfully.

2. The tarball is built using "make dist", which depends on "make all", so
the distribution should be built with up-to-date .c files.  Obviously, it is
vital that the distribution-maker (me, this time) has yacc & lex installed.
But someone building from the tarball need not have them.


> > We haven't put any energy into the fortran stuff.  If the FORTRAN
> > bindings are important to you, let us know!
> 
> I stopped building the fortran by default, but left it in for those who
> might be interested. Since the old Makefile (now broken) and the .c files
> (yes, the fortran interface is in C) are all there, it should be fairly
> easy for someone who cares to build the wrappers by hand and add them to
> the library (I think that it was only ever used under irix).

Yes, that's basically my attitude at the moment.  If there's a critical
mass of people that require FORTRAN bindings, I'll look at automakifying
it all.

-Steve