On 2007-01-11 17:03-0700 Orion Poplawski wrote: > [...]plplot is hard > because it touches nearly every compiler/language/library.
Orion, have you just coined a new mantra for our development team? :-) Seriously, I couldn't agree more with your statement. A full-blown PLplot build is an excellent test that almost everything has been properly installed/is working correctly on your system. It does make life difficult if you are on the cutting edge, as with Fedora development. It also has made creating our CBS (and our ABS before that) an "interesting" challenge. Nevertheless, I fundamentally don't mind all the PLplot dependencies because most are optional, and each added PLplot option adds a lot of value. Thus, the user has a chance to build a minimal plplot that is really safe but rather uninteresting (say no bindings other than C and only the ps device driver) or he can add a lot of value to PLplot (in terms of language bindings and device drivers) assuming all the additional dependencies are installed correctly and working properly. Outside some cutting-edge situations, the dependency issue is actually not much of an issue on Linux, and I think the same is true on Mac OS X (in part due to fink). On windows, I am told dependencies are an important issue which is why I am delighted that Werner and Arjen are trying to help solve it with their 3rd-party and PLplot binary releases. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
