Open Grid Analysis and Display System Files

Supplemental Libraries (Supplibs)
=================================

Introduction
------------

As features continue to be added to GrADS with each new release, the
number of external packages needed for preparing binary distributions
has been steadly increasing. Recent efforts to package GrADS within
the major Linux distributions have benefited from the package
management inherent in these projects; see for example GrADS Package
in Fedora Extras maintained by Patrice Dumas. However, GrADS is still
primarily released in form of binary distrbutions. Creating these
distributions require careful maintenance of the external packages,
usually as a collection of static libraries, the so-called
/supplibs'. /

Up to GrADS v1.9beta4, developers have maintained pre-compiled tarballs
of the /supplibs/ for the supported platforms, along with sources for
those libraries which needed customization. This software is still
available at COLA's anonymous ftp site
<ftp://grads.iges.org/grads/Supplibs>. Preparing /supplibs/ for a new
platform was an ad-hoc time consuming task, and different platforms had
different versions of these external packages, potentially leading to
non-uniform behavior among these builds.

Starting with GrADS v1.9 an effort was made to collect the source code
for the /supplibs/ in a central repository
<http://opengrads.cvs.sourceforge.net/opengrads/supplibs/>, including a
mechanism for building all the external packages with a single command:
gmake install . Having all the packages on a single repository allows
for a more rigorous configuration management of the /supplibs/, leading
to a uniform set of libraries across the different platforms.

As pre-compiled version of the /supplibs/ become available it is our
intention to make them available on the web to facilitate the task of
building GrADS from sources by developers and end users alike. This
document, however, focus on building the /supplibs/ from sources.

Contents of the Supplibs
------------------------

See ChangeLog for a list of packages and corresponding versions. Also
see script *get_versions* for the versions of each package.

Tested Platforms
----------------

Although these are not necessarily supported platforms for GrADS, the
/supplibs' are known to build in the following platforms:/

    * Linux
          o i686
          o x86_64
          o ia64 (Altix) 
    * Mac OS X (Darwin)
          o Intel
          o PowerPC 
    * Windows (under cygwin)
    * FreeBSD 6.3 and 7.0
          o i386 
          o amd64


F A Q
-----

      Why is the top makefile called /GNUmakefile/ and not simply
      /Makefile/?

GNUmakefile is the first file GNU make uses for a default makefile. Any
POSIX makefile would not know what to do with this file. Therefore, if
mistakenly you enter make install where make is not GNU make it would
report back that there is nothing to build here --- a clue that you need
to get a hold of GNU make.


      Do I need the bin/ directory in the /supplibs/ for building GrADS?

The /supplibs/ comes with its own copy of pkg-config which resides in
the bin/ directory. If you have pkg-config already installed, you should
be able to use it, but make sure you set the environment variable
PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR to find the /supplibs/ version of the *.pc files.
However, if you do not have pkg-config installed, you must at least keep
bin/pkg-config.


License Information
-------------------

Consult each subdirectory for the specific licensing terms for each
package. The top GNUmakefile and fragments are here placed in the
public domain.

Arlindo da Silva <dasilva@alum.mit.edu>