PVM 3.4.2 has been uploaded to incoming. It now has three packages: a small libpvm3, the pvm runtime, and a larger pvm-dev. Since the minimal installed size has shrunk from 461K (pvm 3.4.0) to 203K (libpvm3 3.4.2) and no potentially risky daemons (pvmd had a /tmp problem) are required I'm planning to rebuild povray to produce only one binary with both X and PVM enabled. Other dependent packages may choose to depend on either pvm (if you *really* want pvm to work), or libpvm3 if you can struggle along when pvm_spawn() returns an error. libpvm3 will be found by dpkg_shlibs at package build time, so no control file changes are needed if you want only a libpvm3 dependency.
Another change is the /etc/alternatives/pvm-rsh alternative link. PVM can now use ssh (and krsh presumably) to initiate pvmd connections. Inter-daemon communications is still in the clear though, so this isn't a security enhancement, just a convenience enhancement. PVM uses whatever /usr/lib/pvm3/bin/rsh ultimately points to, defaulting to rsh-client (suggested, not depended upon). If you don't have rsh-client installed you'll need to manually override /etc/alternatives/pvm-rsh. If a system-wide remote-shell alternative is eventually put in place I'll change pvm-rsh to default to that. I was unable to produce new powerpc .debs due to a gcc 2.95.1 powerpc varags oversight (no shorts, possibly other data types missing as well). A report and possible patch have been submitted. It doesn't look like any other architectures will be affected, though we'll have to see what the autobuilders do. -Drake
