-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 9/18/11 12:35 PM, Woody Greene wrote: > Hi. >
Forwarding your rant on to the developer list, because all I'm responsible for is wxmaxima, maxima and sbcl-maxima. > I've been trying to bring up wxMaxima - and as I find it's > separately necessary (!!) Maxima. For my now ancient 2002 Mac > Quicksilver. I really do want to do some algebra and calculus on > the machine, any available machine, and would rather use this one > than go buy Windows or set up another Linux disk on this one. > > I did set up a Linux distribution some time ago on this machine, > and probably even saved the disk. That might be the easier way to > go. > > > My suggestions for improvement are these, and they apply to . > Fink, . Fink Master, . the Package system in general, . and the > package relationship between wxmaxima and maxima. > > 1. Make the damned thing - using Fink Master to set up wxMaxima > (Plus Maxima, without which there is nothing) work right the first > time. What is "Fink Master"? maxima has worked fine for me on clean system tests from 10.4 -> 10.6. > 2. How in hell does a modern compile and load system, specifically > FinkMaster, take 36 hours to run (give or take 12 hours) on a 733 > Mhz machine with 1.5 Gby on a 400-600Kby/sec download speed? Depends on what you're building. 733 GHz is pokey these days. My formerly 800 GHz machine takes more than a day to build Qt4 or a gcc. > . By doing everything over, and over, and over again: environment > tests of compilers, like gcc 4.0. Packages are modular, and therefore they check for the same stuff. > By getting far-downstream errors, forcing redoing the ENTIRE > package compile We force full rebuilds because we want a clean build environment, to try to ensure consistent results. > . By requiring multiple compilers, some of which have > non-functioning versions in the package library. Like the CMU Lisp > compiler. See http://pangea.stanford.edu/~schmitt/maxima.html Dead wrong. Fink's maxima has _never_ used CMUCL. It used to use CLISP, and now uses SBCL. Packages require what they require, and sometimes it involves swapping stuff in and out. > . And by compiling every little bit - especially INCLUDE files - > rather than linking in precompiled routines that know what all the > formats are for this machine. One compile per data type, rather > than hundreds - or tens of thousands, would save a HELL of a lot of > time. Hours. Tens of hours. Are you offering us build machines so that we can precompile the routines and host them? Because that's what is required to do that. > . and by not taking over realistic priority and resources during > compile. Sure "background" tasks shouldn't grab the highest > priority. But I've got BOINC running at the same time, No idea what this is, and I'm not gonna look it up. it gets 50% or so, and > FinkMaster etc gets 50%. Why not double an already ridiculously > long load time? Fun, isn't it? I believe you can "renice" the compiler process down to a lower priority, at the expense of longer time. > > 3. "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you > make." - Beatles. Maybe so in real life, but not with dumb > computers. End status is failure on Maxima, due to ???, most likely > wrong version of CMU compiler, or a dozen other warnings, like "No > package found for "header"". > Again, without _specific_ bug reports we can't help you do anything. > OK, so Fink is just to HELP the Unix non-expert. And truly it does. > I got a working Fink (after a lot of trouble) and Fink Master. And, > lo and behold, something that appears to function for wxMaxima. > That isn't linked to Maxima, because some users wanted to > substitute a different copy of that. Well. Why not default the > STANDARD copy? Unix policy, you can do what you like. > What do you mean "standard"? An upstream copy that somebody else built? We don't repackage stuff from other distributions. Or ours? It doesn't _link_ in any case. > 4. What all this adds up to is: Maybe, just maybe, it's possible to > kludge something together that works. By shifting venues, from OS X > 4.11 Tiger, to 5 Snow Leopard, or to 6 Lion. Professor Schmitt has > kindly set up OS X simple downloads - for the most recent > version(s) of OS X, as is only reasonable. Which leaves me out. I'm sorry that you're having problems, but I have no control over what hardware you can or cannot afford. All I can do is respond to _specific_ bug reports and fix the _specific_ issue with a package. > Or I can move to (a second system on my Mac) running Linux. Sure, > that'll work. I've done it - it only took 4 late nights to get a > working Linux that was close to being up to date, and ran. > > And I even got Maxima and wxMaxima in with it. Two years ago. So I > suppose that I could update it in - say - only 3 or maybe 2 late > nights to do it as an upgrade to Linux and upgrade to Maxima and > wxMaxima. However, that brings up a raft of other problems with > incompatible "package handlers" - at least 2 of them - that don't > recognize each others' packages. In my exuberance at first, I > downloaded 20 or so packages thinking that they MIGHT be useful. > "Then if they're not, I can just un-install them as packages". > Wishful thinking on many levels. > > 5. Conclusion. I know that Source Forge isn't professional. Our only connection with sourceforge is that they host files for us. We're smaller yet. And you do amazingly well > with volunteer talent. Especially given the vast array of software > to develop and support, and the many architectures and OS > versions. > > Somewhere - maybe soon - this tower of Babel will have to go to a > simpler structure, or nothing can continue. > > Regards, Woody Greene > > -- Package manager version: 0.30.2 Distribution version: > selfupdate-rsync Thu Sep 15 11:12:54 2011, 10.4, powerpc Mac OS X > version: 10.4.11 Xcode version: 2.5 gcc version: 4.0.1 (Apple > Computer, Inc. build 5370) make version: 3.80 Feedback Courtesy of > FinkCommander You're on an OS version that the project doesn't support any more. Without _specific error reports_ there is no way any individuals in the project with a 10.4 machine (I have a G4 that can run 10.4) can help you, either. - -- Alexander Hansen, Ph.D. Fink User Liaison http://finkakh.wordpress.com/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk52M7cACgkQB8UpO3rKjQ/g0gCfTy200Anij73AZTiOaDmeizqy mmoAn1ikSKYnwBDN/PyZmolOPyscFGoj =HoDS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ BlackBerry® DevCon Americas, Oct. 18-20, San Francisco, CA http://p.sf.net/sfu/rim-devcon-copy2 _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net List archive: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.os.apple.fink.devel Subscription management: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
