Bugzilla Bug 163121

Hi Markus,

Today we released a new IT++ version, which is based on our latest SVN sources.
This version is denoted as development and for some time we are going to
release in parallel development and stable versions...
In fact, it should be quite stable and shouldn't contain much new bugs, since
most of the advanced IT++ users use bleeding edge releases, or even trunk
sources, and report possible bugs for them.

I would like you to add this release to the portage tree and mark is as testing
(~) in parallel to the stable 3.10.x series.

From the configuration point of view, there is a new functionality in this
release: one can decide which modules can be omitted from building. The
possible list of optional modules is as follows:
  --disable-comm          do not include communications module
  --disable-fixed         do not include fixed-point module
  --disable-optim         do not include optimization module
  --disable-protocol      do not include protocol module
  --disable-signal        do not include signal processing module
  --disable-srccode       do not include source coding module

Do you think we can add a separate USE flag to enable/disable each of them,
e.g. no-comm, no-fixed, no-optim, etc? This would be most flexible from users
point of view. I propose here "no-..." USE flags, because I would like to have
all modules installed by default, i.e. when users won't set particular "no-..."
flags.

In the ebuild provided as attachment (patch against itpp-3.10.8.ebuild), I only
used an existing "minimal" USE flag, which disables all optional modules at
once. But this is not elegant solution in my humble opinion.

What do you think?

/Adam

PS. The stable releases (3.10.x) are for some time part of Fedora Extras
project, where PPC platform is supported out of the box. Moreover, I have a
report from Debian, that they also prepared packages for all Debian archs. 
Personally I also test the IT++ library on Solaris SPARC with GCC installed.
Therefore, I think it is time to add new keywords to the IT++ ebuilds: ppc,
ppc64, sparc and maybe alpha...

Created an attachment (id=107716) [details]
patch against itpp-3.10.8.ebuild which produces itpp-3.99.0.ebuild

Hi Adam,

Thank you very much for the update; I will have a look
at this hopefully sometime this week.

Regarding the use flags I am personally not a big fan of too
many of them (there are way too many already). They make
sense if enabling one of them would require additional dependencies
or leads to a significant increase in compile time or size of the
install. Otherwise, user's won't be inconvenienced much by
simply compiling the whole package. Furthermore, once
other packages in portage start depending on itpp we might
end up having to check if certain components are present
in the itpp install and things start getting messy and confusing
for our users.

That being said, I'd find a "minimal" useflag the best solution
if we really think that allowing the users to leave out certain
itpp components will provide them with a benefit. Otherwise I'd
rather go with the whole package and have everything in place.

Regarding marking itpp on other arches that sounds fine, but has to 
be done by the respective arch teams since I don't have the proper 
hardware to test.
How about if we go with  ppc, ppc64 and sparc? If that sounds fine
just let me know and I'll file a bug about it.

Cheers,
Markus

(In reply to comment #2)
> Regarding the use flags I am personally not a big fan of too
> many of them (there are way too many already).
[...]
> That being said, I'd find a "minimal" useflag the best solution
> if we really think that allowing the users to leave out certain
> itpp components will provide them with a benefit. Otherwise I'd
> rather go with the whole package and have everything in place.

OK. Fine. Let's then stick to the current implementation with "minimal"
flag.

> Regarding marking itpp on other arches that sounds fine, but has to 
> be done by the respective arch teams since I don't have the proper 
> hardware to test.
> How about if we go with  ppc, ppc64 and sparc? If that sounds fine
> just let me know and I'll file a bug about it.

Sure. Let's start with them.

All the best!
/Adam

(In reply to comment #3)
> 
> OK. Fine. Let's then stick to the current implementation with "minimal"
> flag.

Sounds good! If in the future we feel that compiling a certain component
does put a lot of unnecessary strain on users' time/disk-space/... we can
always think about additional useflags.

> 
> > Regarding marking itpp on other arches that sounds fine, but has to 
> > be done by the respective arch teams since I don't have the proper 
> > hardware to test.
> > How about if we go with  ppc, ppc64 and sparc? If that sounds fine
> > just let me know and I'll file a bug about it.
> 

Good, I'll file a bug with the respective arch teams as soon as I get
to it and will cc you so you can watch the progress.

cheers,
Markus

itpp-3.99.0 is now in portage cvs.

Thanks for your help, Adam!

cheers,
Markus