RE: [Axiom-developer] AxiomBinaries

[Page, Bill]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 
> address@hidden
.org [mailto:axiom-developer-bounces+bill.page1>
address@hidden On Behalf Of Alfredo Portes
> Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 12:02 PM
> To: Waldek Hebisch
> Cc: axiom-dev
> Subject: Re: [Axiom-developer] AxiomBinaries
> 
> Thanks for the comments.
> 
> > Some comments:
> >
> > 1) The table looks really bad in Lynx (all tables look bad in Lynx,
> > but this one is worse then average).
> 

If you must use Lynx, then you should probably be reading the
source format of the wiki pages rather than the rendered form.
Try

http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/SandBoxDoyen/src

But I think it is unrealistic to design a web site to support
a text-only browser.

> :-) . I need input from Bill, maybe is the DHTML.

No, I am sure that Lynx would just ignore the javascript, but there
is nothing like that in these tables. The reStructuredText source
format of the tables is rendered as common HTML.
 
> > 2) The page seen to equate "Linux" with "i386 Linux".  I think we
> > should make clear an which architecture given tarball 
> > works. Significant
> > fraction of Linux users are on 64-bit systems and may prefer 64-bit
> > binaries.
> 
> I forgot to add this, maybe because I did not see 64bit 
> binaries in the old page, but I will make the distinction.
> 

You need to think carefully about how to layout the information.
I would suggest replacing the Gold and Silver heading with a
hardware heading. Then put the Gold and Silver versions in two
separate tables. But maybe we are being a little two ambitious?
Who is going to generate all of these binaries and from what
version of the source? How will they be kept reasonably current?

> > Also, it seems that Debian (and only Debian) has binaries for
> > architectures different than i386 and amd64, but the page
> > completly missess such information.
>

I know people have built Axiom on both IA64 and amd64 (x86)
platforms. We were hoping that many some of them might contribute
a binary tarball for inclusion on the web site. So far, as far
as I know only Tim and I have actually uploaded binaries.
 
> Do you mean by using apt-get?

Debian has a large compile farm which can be configured to
automatically post new binary versions from updated sources.

There of course (or soon will be) also versions of Axiom for
Solaris/sparc and OSX/PPC.

> 
> > 3) The page mention setting multiple enviroment variables.  
> >    IMHO such settings should be part of wrapper script
> >    (automatically updated at installation time).  Of course,
> >    this is really fault of given tarball...
> 
> Would this be corrected when the new build procedure is done?
>

All of the binaries available now (except for Debian) have been
created by an adhoc manual process.

In a separate thread Waldek mentioned the need for a

 # make dist

script that would automatically build a complete Axiom distribution
with proper wrapper scripts and possibly also automatic installation
programs (such as the one included now with the Axiom on Windows
binary distribution.

Regards,
Bill Page.