Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom silver branch

[Ralf Hemmecke]

On 04/09/2006 05:34 AM, Bill Page wrote:
> On April 8, 2006 5:47 PM Frederic Lehobey wrote:
> > ... 
> > On Sat, Apr 08, 2006 at 05:25:08PM -0400, Bill Page wrote:
> > > Storing binary files in a source code archive is something that
> > > I have always objected to, but Tim insists on re-distributing
> > > code this way. I really think we should stop doing this.
> > Please, provide the relevant patches. This is exactly what needs
> > the silver branch and what it is intended for.  :-)
>
> Indeed. But these two patches will introduce two new dependencies:
> both gcl and noweb would have to be installed *before* building
> Axiom. Personally, I don't think that this is a problem. Tim Daly
> resists. Are there any other opinions?

We actually have (at least) two types of people.
1) Axiom users
2) Axiom developers

I guess, Axiom users are usually happy if they can download a binary 
package for their machine that works without a problem.
Unfortunately, we don't have a person who is willing to maintain such a 
collection of binaries. Somebody interested in that?

So some Axiom users have to become "Axiom builder", i.e. they have to 
download the sources and type "./configure; make; make install".

If that were all they have to do then fine, but if "configure" fails, it 
just tells you that something that is a prerequisit is not on the system 
(in Axiom there actually is no proper configure script). Then that 
person has to figure out where to get that from, install it and 
"configure" again (and maybe finding the next missing thing). That is a 
real burden, and in some sense Tim is right to minimise the effort of 
someone who just wants to _use_ Axiom.


I remember when I released my ALLPROSE many people complained that 
something is missing that they could not find. And I had given links to 
all the files on my website and prerequisites were also mentioned in the 
.dvi file. But people don't read. :-(
So yesterday, I tried to package up all the things together with 
ALLPROSE. However, I am doing this quite unwillingly.

A) It costs more time for me to package things up.
B) I feel uneasy to distribute something that is not mine, but produced 
by other people. Yes, even if it is under GPL.
C) I don't even really know whether I am allowed to do this
For example framed.sty says.

% framed.sty   v 0.8a   21-Jul-2003
% Copyright (C) 1992-2003 by Donald Arseneau
% These macros may be freely transmitted, reproduced, or modified
% provided that this notice is left intact.

If I put it together with allprose.tar.gz (GPL2) in a meta-archive, 
would that mean that framed.sty is also GPL2? (I would not want to do 
this since I don't think that I should change any license the author has 
set.)

Well Axiom is doing similar things with GCL. Even more, GCL is part of 
the Axiom archive. Hmmm...



I would feel better if if Axiom becomes something like a shell that 
depends on several prerequisites. That would make Camm's work much 
easier, and maybe we should simply learn from him. Yes, that would mean 
for each version we have to say what is the minimum version of the 
dependency object.

Well, but not all people use DEBIAN. How would other people be easy with 
not having gcl and noweb in their Axiom distribution?

There are maybe two options.
1) We have two archives, one is the prerequisite thing and one is the 
Axiom stuff we are actually focused on. Looks a bit similar to what we 
have now, but Axiom would NOT have any Makefile target that deals with 
building the prerequisites. Those Makefile things should be in the other 
archive. So this would be different from the current situation.

2) There is just one archive and this is Axiom without noweb, gcl and 
any other additional useful package. AND there is an installation script 
(Makefile or whatever) which is responsible for setting the stage so 
that Axiom will compile without complaining. That script checks if gcl 
is there in the right version, if not it would get it via "wget" from 
the internet and "make" it. Same with "noweb" etc.

I feel it is somehow a disadvantage to have a need for an internet 
connection for installation, but in some sense it is a bit like Debian 
or other GNU/Linux distributions.

The real disadvantage is when you want to press Axiom on a CD. Of course 
you must also provide the most important prerequisites like gcl and 
noweb on the CD since you cannot expect internet connection then.

We clearly already have some prerequisite. However, could somebody say 
what the prerequisites are apart from gcl and noweb? We rely on some 
"standard linux distribution". But what is "standard"? Debian 
dependencies show "libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4)" and "libgmp3". Interesting... 
I don't find them in our "zips" directory. ;-)



And what about the Axiom developers? Well, if they see that they are 
missing gcl (./configure would tell them), they look at an AxiomWiki 
page and follow the steps manually (until we have the script mentioned 
above).

Ah, yes, wasn't there someone who wanted to write some autoconf/automake 
stuff for Axiom? I would really appreciate that. It cannot hurt if we 
learn about such standard tools. Am I wrong?

All the best

Ralf