Comments on building GrADS from source

[Jennifer Adams]

On Oct 25, 2005, at 8:42 PM, Len Makin wrote:

> Hi Jennifer,
> As a non-GrADS user (a mere support person ;-) I was charged with
> (re)building GrADS after we had a disk crash, and subsequently changed
> to
> SuSe Linux which doesn't include it in the distribution. I decided the
> safest was to build from source, so downloaded 1.9b4(tar.gz). I was
> surprised to find it had a simple problem discovered as follows:
>
> [Note: many application packages for our users are installed under
> /tools ]
> Checking for desirable pre-requisites and what was currently
> installed, I
> installed (/usr/local):
>       - gd-2.0.33 (Note:With SuSe, libgd.so is installed in
> /usr/lib,rpm -q
> tells me version is gd-2.0.32-6, but there are no corresponding
> headers (gd.h) and related files. Need something like
> gd-devel?? - not in SuSe)
Try installing this version of the gd library instead:
ftp://grads.iges.org/grads/Supplibs/1.8/src/gd-1.7.3.tar.Z

I don't know what SuSe and Fedora have in common, but you might want to
try Pat Dumas's version of the auto-configure system (recently posted
to gradsusr) and see how it works with version 1.7.3 of the gd library.

> <snip> ... people are submitting needed
> changes. What is the process for testing and incorporating these into
> the
> official sources. How often are source updates expected to be released?
> Presumably the b in b4 means beta status, so is there an expected 1.9
> (non-beta) version?
GrADS development is not continuous. It happens in spits and bursts,
followed by periods of nothing. We do plan to put out a non-beta
version of 1.9 -- there are still a few bugs that need to be fixed and
I am working on them as time allows. The supplibs are another big
problem -- your issues with the gd library are a perfect example. And
the DODS/OPeNDAP libraries are also problematic, since we can't really
continue to use  version 3.2 because it requires a outdated version of
gcc, but I haven't been able to find the time to build and test with
version 3.5 -- this is something I REALLY need to do. Pat Dumas's
patches for the build system are likely going to make it a lot more
robust, but I have not been able to implement or test them either.

I could say a lot more, but will restrain myself and leave it at this:
right now our resources are too limited to provide the complete support
the community really needs.

Jennifer
--
Jennifer Miletta Adams
Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)
4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302
Calverton, MD 20705 USA
jma at cola.iges.org