2020-08-01 08:00:32 UTC, Dima Pasechnik: > > Sorry for shouting, but "batteries-included" monolithic monsters > don't work (certainly not long-term), in case of Sage it has become > increasingly obvious in the past ~10 years. > An illusion that it is sustainable has been, ironically, kept alive by > OpenDreamKit, where a number of people were full-time doing the > "dirty" system programming work. > > Every package with spkg-configure.m4 should become part of Sage > "toolchain" and be removed from Sage proper. It's really become a > waste of everyone's time, duplication of effort to maintain things > like curl, libpng, gcc/gfortran, python, maxima, etc etc etc. > > If one likes to do system programming, there are much better ways to > help Sage project along than maintaining the monolithic monster. E.g., > removing dead bits, such as MPIR, Atlas, enabling system Python > packages. > > Speaking of macOS, on modern macOS properly installing 3rd party > software into /Applications/ needs various Apple's blessings, unless > you turn off their security mechanisms. We badly need someone who can > use Xcode to revive Sage macOS app. > Besides, how about working with Homebrew formulae to offload more of > Sage packages there. > How about helping Conda's Sage distribution. (The latter potentially > very helpful for Conda on Linux, too).
Thanks Dima for suggesting better ways to spend my time. I profoundly agree that I would be more useful if I could - help prepare spkg-configure.m4 files for more packages - help enable system Python packages - help revive the macOS app - help with any or all of the Arch, Conda, Cygwin, Debian, Fedora, Guix, Homebrew, Nix, ZeroInstall distributions but sadly I don't know how to do any of those. If anybody can give a tutorial on any generally useful but underpowered task that could take extra help, such as one of the above, or any other one really, I can make myself available at any time of day or night, host the tutorial on my department's BigBlueButton server, record the session if that would seem useful, share the recording if the recorded people agree, and try to start doing useful work. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your relentless work on the spkg-configure.m4 front and on many other fronts, in Sage and the wider math software ecosystem, and for your invaluable and patient help with install problems, crash reports, never tired of going through build logs and crash logs to find the relevant piece of information, make the appropriate suggestion, ask the right follow-up question to figure out the missing bits of information, and getting things going when they would otherwise easily stall. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/57d0de6e-b549-4835-82b6-774f39ad0f2do%40googlegroups.com.
