Hi Kevin, First off, great initiative. At some point I looked into packaging GEANT 4 too, but ws quickly discouraged by the build process and so forth - glad you took the time and effort to do so.
As for the size - yeah, it's huge, but so is CERNLIB, ROOT, and what not. I think it's a minor issue. After all, what's a few hundred Megs on a 100 Gig disk? :-) To make things integrate even more, I'd do a package of the ROOT VMC interface to GEANT 4, once that stabilises (i.e., works properly), and I do more or less have an alternative GEANT 3 package with a VMC interface too. Now, for FLUKA (the 3rd used transport backend code), the situation is different, as it's closed source upstream, and the VMC is licensed under a restrictive ALICE license. On Thu, 2005-12-22 at 16:41 -0500, Kevin B. McCarty wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hi Brett, > > (CC-ing to James Ferrando since I made a slight update of his clhep2 > package to the newest upstream version, and I don't know if he > subscribes to debian-science) > > On 12/22/05, Brett Viren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Have you contacted Geant4 folks to see if they would distribute your > > debian/ source directory? > > Not yet -- I'd prefer not to submit it upstream until I've thoroughly > polished and tested the .debs. (And if they do end up in Debian's > archive, it makes life easier if upstream doesn't have their own debian > directory.) Fair enough. > I also don't know whether upstream would approve of one of my > improvements. I figured out how to make it unnecessary to set most of > the Geant 4 environment variables by writing a couple of wrapper > scripts: "g4make" to run make, and "g4run" to run a Geant 4 executable, > in a subshell with the relevant env. variables set. (I also wrote a > couple of scripts, env.sh and env.csh, that people can optionally source > in their login files instead of using the wrapper scripts if they really > want a polluted environment namespace.) See the README.Debian in the > geant4 source package (see below) for more info. In my humble opinion, wrapper scripts are ugly. That said, I could imagine that it would be the best solution (for now) to package GEANT 4 - it's a mess when it comes to environment variables. However, in the long run, it'd probably be better to lobby for cleaning the code of environment variables - after all, GEANT 4 is really a library, not a specific application. > > Just distributing your debian/ source directory would make me happy! > > Well, OK. I've just made it accessible as a source package to APT. (By > the way, I hereby license all of my Debian packaging for Geant 4 under > the MIT/X license: > <URL:http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php>) Add this: > > deb-src http://borex.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ unstable main Got it already :-) > to your sources.list. Run "apt-get update" then "apt-get source clhep2 > geant4". You need to build and install the clhep2 .deb first, then > geant4. Hmm. Will try when I have more time. Great effort! > N.B. The clhep2 .deb comes directly from James Ferrando's unofficial > package, just updated slightly to the latest upstream source tarball > (2.0.2.2 instead of 2.0.1.1) - it isn't at all Policy-compliant yet. As > I said, the Geant 4 .debs are also very rough still, so I'm not going to > offer binaries yet and would appreciate it if you don't distribute any > that you compile. > > Also, be sure to check out the hideous hack I wrote called > debian/scripts/env.csh and be awed :-) > > All comments/criticisms about the Debian packaging so far are welcomed. > > > Also, if you need/want a distribution repository I can offer space on > > the one that currently distributes the ROOT debs. > > That would be wonderful! I'll take you up on that offer once I feel > the Geant 4 .debs are ready for public consumption. Brett, you're becoming the HEP Debian software pusher :-) Cool. And thanks. Yours, -- ___ | Christian Holm Christensen |_| | ------------------------------------------------------------- | | Address: Sankt Hansgade 23, 1. th. Phone: (+45) 35 35 96 91 _| DK-2200 Copenhagen N Cell: (+45) 24 61 85 91 _| Denmark Office: (+45) 353 25 404 ____| Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: www.nbi.dk/~cholm | | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
