Hi Denis,
As Steve said, we have thought about including precompiled
binaries vs using natively installed versions carefully. The problem
is that syntax and performance can vary quite a lot between
different versions, and supporting Linux, Sun, IRIX, Alpha,
Mac and Cygwin/Windows makes this all quite tricky.
In particular, tcl/tk/tix was a problem for quite a while as
some platforms had a separate tix and some had tix built-in
to tcl/tk. Now it seems that most have built-in and hence
with the changes I suggested on the FAQ, things can be made
to work with native tcl/tk in a lot of cases (though not all).
We definitely recommend making links from the $FSLDIR/bin
binaries to the appropriate native binaries as the best way
to include local components. This is what I have put in the
instructions for using native tcl/tk (linking tixwish -> wish
and tclsh -> tclsh). It can also be used for imagemagick too
if that is a problem, however I would not recommend that
in general, as many versions of imagemagick seem to have
different syntax for convert which we use quite a lot.
So if our supplied versions do work then it is better to use
them as the syntax is correct for that version.
In future releases we will include more instructions about
how to customise FSL to use native binaries, and may even
have some simple options to the build script as you would like.
However, our main priority has been, and will remain, to make
the package as easy to download and install as possible, whilst
supporting as many common platforms (specifically lots of
other linux versions now) as we can.
For the meantime I hope that some instructions like those I
posted to the FAQ yesterday will be of help to people trying
to get the current distribution working on different systems.
All the best,
Mark
Stephen Smith wrote:
>Hi Denis - your points about it being nice to have a single install of 3rd
>party packages on your computer is a good one and one which we've debated
>a lot internally. We have taken the less-purist approach of bundling
>pretty much everything needed for FSL to run in the distribution in order
>to make the installation as easy as possible for users, but your points
>are valid. As the default presence of packages on OSs changes over time we
>re-evaluate what we bundle (for example we don't bundle "dc", though this
>is in fact missing on some linuxes, etc).
>
>In fact, with most OS versions of our most recent distribution there is an
>easy way to re-point where tixwish and tclsh are - just go to fsl/bin and
>edit the tclsh and tixwish scripts. Hopefully that should be
>straightforward.
>
>Thanks, Steve.
>
>
>
>On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Denis Brown wrote:
>
>
>
>>At 09:24 4/02/2004 +0800, Denis Brown wrote:
>>
>>
>>>At 00:02 4/02/2004 +0000, Mark Jenkinson wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Several people have had problems getting FSL GUIs to run under
>>>>SUSE linux, but we have now found a way to get all the FSL GUIs to run
>>>>
>>>>
>>><snip>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fslfaq/#general_suse
>>>>
>>>>Note that this might also be useful for other platforms where it is
>>>>desirable or necessary to use the native tcl/tk installation.
>>>>
>>>>
>><snip>
>>
>>
>>
>>>--with-tixwish=/usr/bin/wish (Fictitious example but you get my meaning,
>>>I'm sure.) I have looked at the installation scripts for FSL and cannot
>>>
>>>
>>Just to clarify... I know there is a note in the README file alluding to
>>this but it seems that there is still a lot of linking or placing of
>>libs/bins in appropriate directories. I was hoping there was an easier
>>way whereby FSL could be told where the packages were rather than having to
>>have the individual apps compiled to suit FSL. Eg.
>>
>> - Tcl/Tk (8.3) and Tix (4.1) (configure all three with
>> configure --prefix=$FSLDIR before installing and compile Tix
>> with make CC='cc -fwritable-strings').
>>
>>Perhaps I'm interpreting it incorrectly, in which case I humbly accept your
>>flames :-)
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Denis
>>
>>
>>
>
> Stephen M. Smith DPhil
> Associate Director, FMRIB and Analysis Research Coordinator
>
> Oxford University Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain
> John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK
> +44 (0) 1865 222726 (fax 222717)
>
> [log in to unmask] http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/~steve
>
>
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