From: Alan W. I. <ir...@be...> - 2006-07-28 00:58:25
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To PLplot testers everywhere: As you may be aware the KDE developers have recently switched from an autotools-based build system to the CMake build system. The stated advantages of CMake are substantially faster build results, easier build system maintenance, and full support for builds on bare windows platforms as well as Unix, Mac OS X, and Linux. Inspired by this story, Andrew Ross and I have been implementing a CMake build system for PLplot. Although still experimental, we have good reports for Linux, Mac OS X, and MinGW on windows. Buoyed by this success, I would like to encourage widespread testing of the current PLplot cvs version of our CMake build system. The CMake build system for PLplot does have some current limitations. We are still missing the Tcl/Tk interface and a documentation build system. We are also missing the wxwidgets device, the Tk-related devices, and specialized windows and Mac OS X devices as well as some more obscure devices. Despite these current limitations, the results of the PLplot CMake build have a lot of capability which is already suitable for many users. For example, on Linux (Debian stable and Ubuntu dapper) we have the C, C++, f77, f95, java, and python interfaces and examples working as well as png, jpeg, gif, gcw, ps, psttf, and xwin device drivers. For the postscript results produced by ./plplot-test.sh in the installed examples directory, we are getting the same results (aside from occasional floating-point rounding errors) as previous results with the autotools build system. This is most encouraging. Here is how to get involved if you would like to help us out with some test results, learn more about CMake, and/or if you are simply curious about the speed and convenience of this experimental build system for PLplot. (1) Download, build and install cmake-2.4.2 (that version is essential and available from http://www.cmake.org/HTML/Download.html). (2) Initialize the PLplot build as follows: cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/your_install_prefix \ -DCMAKE_VERBOSE_MAKEFILE=ON ../plplot_cmake >& cmake.out plplot_cmake must be a clean PLplot source tree checked out from CVS HEAD following the directions at http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=2915 The above cmake command is initially run from an empty build tree. After running it you will probably also want to run ccmake ../plplot_cmake which is a command-line-interface that makes it convenient to set PLplot options. The above cmake command completely replaces the cf/bootstrap.sh and ./configure commands that you are used to (and is much faster than those commands as well which is one of our motivations for implementing this new CMake build system for PLplot). (3) From the same separate build directory that was populated by Makefiles with the above cmake command, finish the PLplot build and install following my usual recommended pattern for initial testing of new versions of PLplot software, i.e., make >& make.out make install >& make_install.out cd /tmp cp -a /your_install_prefix/share/plplot-5.6.1/examples . cd examples make >& make_examples.out ./plplot-test.sh >& plplot-test.out The above testing pattern should work on any Unix (including Cygwin and MinGW on windows). Currently, we have no experience with the Plplot CMake build system on bare windows (i.e., windows without Cygwin or MinGW). For that case, you will have to consult the CMake documentation (collected below) to see how to mimic the above test pattern, but we will be most interested in the results. (4) If there are problems in any of the above steps, please collect into a compressed tarball all the important CakeCache.txt, CMakeFiles/CMakeError.log, and CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log files produced by the cmake command as well as _all_ of the above *.out files up to and including the step where the problem occurred. You can send that compressed tarball to me or the plplot_devel list as an attachment and I will take it from there. (5) Success stories are welcome as well! (6) If you want to delve more deeply into CMake (especially for the bare windows case), I have collected some useful references in cmake/README.cmake_doc in the CVS version of PLplot. Good luck with your testing of the experimental build system! 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 __________________________ |