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From: <ce...@ly...> - 1998-10-22 14:09:12
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> I have various problems with modules and would love it if someone > picked up development of them again; but this is a common thread > here. Indeed it is. In the spirit of "less is more" I decided to do something radical about the situation. Please allow me to announce cmod version 1.1, available via http://www.lysator.liu.se/cmod/ and ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/unix/cmod/cmod-1.1.tar.gz Modules is a very nice idea, but the fact that the implementation relies on TCL is problematic. Although TCL does provide a lot of power and flexibility, that power and flexibility comes with a price tag attached: * modules version X relies on TCL version Y. Only with luck can you upgrade one without breaking the other. * startup time for the "module" command is unnecessarily large. * compiling TCL on a machine where it isn't supported, such as old and obsolete machines, or very new releases of an operating system, is a non-trivial task. When I inspected all the module files we used at Lysator, I found that the power and flexibility provided by TCL was not used, so we payed for something we didn't need. I decided to write a replacement in portable C, to be released under GPL. cmod compiles on almost everything that is Unix-like. It uses Autoconf and Automake so that the installation process is easiy and familiar. We have been using cmod on some operating systems for almost a year at Lysator, and we recently switched to using cmod everywhere. The module files used by cmod are similar to the ones used by modules, but cmod is not a drop-in replacement (unless your module files are extremely simple). I am aware that this message may be a little off-topic on this list, but since most of the postings to this list have been asking for a maintained version of modules I hope nobody will flame me for announcing this program here. Yours, Per Cederqvist |
