VMD-L Mailing List

From: Stéphane Teletchéa (steletch_at_jouy.inra.fr)
Date: Fri Feb 10 2006 - 08:18:21 CST

John Stone a écrit :
> Bogdan,
> I could certainly setup a VMware build box. Since I'm the only
> one doing all of this work, I don't really have the time to build
> any more linux versions of VMD. We make the source code available,
> so people running versions of linux that are far behind or far ahead
> of what I'm running here can build their own VMD binaries. It takes
> a lot of testing to determine that a build of VMD is even worth making
> available, and so one of the problems with adding VMware and several new
> linux versions is that it assumes I'll have time to test these additional
> builds, but in reality I'm already maxed out desparately trying to keep
> up with incoming VMD related emails and testing the builds I already
> provide. I would definitely like to make it easier for people to
> build VMD from source code, so I'm willing to accept any suggestions
> that would make the source distribution much easier to use.
>
> John
>

I think the 2 majors problems about the VMD build is its non standard
structure for any linux user (no ./configure, make, make install) and
its licence (quite permissive though, but not GPL).

Apart from those 2, i'd say you could ask the 'community' for more
involvment into vmd.

For instance, we all use different distributions (RH, CentOS, Debian,
Ubuntu, Mandriva, Suse, ...) and if you need to cope with all of them,
you'll seriously be overbooked rapidly.

Another degree of complexity lies in all the platforms supported (which
is great), from Windows to MacOS, ...

In short, we could help you to get more feedback as reference users (one
per distribution/system) for advanced build/tests ? In that way, we
could ensure latest build won't be blocked by a lacking patch (this
patch can be incorporated upstream on the required librairies, thus
benefitting to all users), since RPM (probably ebuild and apt also) can
be used to patch the software on the fly (while building it).

Let apart the licence and the configuration process (à la GNU), i think
this could be the best way to let you have more room for VMD core
developpment (and another way to give you back all the efforts put in
the software developpment).

If needed, i'd be happy to be the Mandrivalinux reference guy :-) (i
think i have at least 10.1, LE 2005, 2006 and cooker available, with
some 64 bits machines with nvidia or ati cards).

Stéphane 

-- 
Stéphane Téletchéa, PhD.                  http://www.steletch.org
Unité Mathématique Informatique et Génome http://migale.jouy.inra.fr/mig
INRA, Domaine de Vilvert                  Tél : (33) 134 652 891
78352 Jouy-en-Josas cedex, France         Fax : (33) 134 652 901