Re: [Plplot-devel] Building on Mac OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard)

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2011-01-03 10:37-0800 David MacMahon wrote:

> I'm slowly getting back to some plplot development.  Since my last
involvement with plplot, I have received a new computer with Mac OS X
10.6.5 (aka Snow Leopard) and a 64 bit processor (Intel Core i5).  I
noticed a few issues when building plplot on this new system.  I'm
documenting them all here for posterity, though I have a few questions
mixed in.  Apologies in advance for the lengthiness.

Hi Dave:

Thanks for your continued strong interest in PLplot. I cannot help you
with specifics on the build-system issues you have brought up because
I don't have access to Mac OS X myself, but my general feeling is that
our developers with access to that platform (i.e., Hazen, Werner, and
Jerry) all have different methods of avoiding build-system issues like
you have discovered on that platform. Instead, of such a "avoidance"
approach like you what I would like to see is a PLplot build system
for Mac OS X that builds (or drops with an explanatory message if the
environment is not right) the components of PLplot just as smoothly as
it does on Linux. Therefore, I urge all of you to work together toward
achieving that goal.  Dave, that probably means you are going to have
to learn more cmake logic, but that is pretty straightforward, and
enhanced CMake logic skills are well worth having for developers these
days since CMake is used to build so many different software packages.

Alan
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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 libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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