Peter,
On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Peter W. Draper wrote:
> > Similarly, since the files par_par (for example) are always invoked as
> > PAR_PAR, is there any reason why they're not installed as such?
>
> This follows from FORTRAN itself being a case-insensive language and VMS
> having a case-insensitive file system, so include files back then were
> 'PAR_PAR' not 'par_par' (well almost, the include files were located using
> symbols, a bit like aliases, that you created using package commands like
> star_dev etc.).
Ah right -- that makes a lot of sense. I remember symbols, and the
delights of logical names. Ah, memory....
What I take from that is that
- the package commands like star_dev are in fact redundant, since
compilers have -I flags, and since one original point of them
was to give a familiar feeling to folk migrating from VMS; and
- I should check in the _PAR, _ERR and (fio) _CMN files as upper-case,
or case-swap on installation those files which are generated with
lowercase names.
Is that correct?
> Initially when we first moved to UNIX Dave Terrett produced SPT (see
> SUN/111) which editted include file statements to the full file names, but
> we found the necessity to do this a burden, so the current system was
> adopted, which does not rely on any special features of the compiler, just
> the operating system having something like a copy/link command.
I appreciate the goal -- it depends whether we believe that -I is a
compiler special feature. If it turned out to be a problem in fact,
it would be rather easy at configure time to detect whether -I was
supported and generate the required local links if not.
> > Are there any other oddnesses which have been gnawing away at folk?
> > This is the time to sort them out.
>
> Just one further point. If you go ahead and consolidate all the
> development tweaks, remember that we do have a lot of people who use these
> now and successfully develop software, even under this incredible burdon,
> it's a pain to them if you change things (for change sake).
I appreciate this, and I will keep reminding myself of it, but I'm not
changing things for the sake of it. Putting things into the repository
and autoconfing them, we have an opportunity to `unweird' the software
set, by removing a variety of small features which are there for mostly
historical reasons.
The aim is to make things easier for everyone, including those who
haven't started working with the software yet. Look at configure.ac
and Makefile.am in messgen -- I hope this is relatively inviting!
See you,
Norman
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Norman Gray http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/
Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK [log in to unmask]
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