Daniel J Sebald wrote:
Eh, I'm not sure about that. When it comes to scientific programming,
software developers go to sources they can trust.
This is orthogonal to whether it is packaged as a shared library or as
individual source code files...
And most special functions are distributed as source code. (Even
"libraries" like SLATEC and CEPHES are really just collections of source
files; they don't even come with Makefiles.) There are exceptions, of
course, like GSL, but they are the exception and not the rule.
I've distributed scientific libraries for many years now, and have used
autoconf-ed packages extensively (and have even contributed fairly major
patches to autoconf). This is a necessity for large, complex packages,
but the vast majority of individual users I've dealt with seem daunted
by this, and would prefer just a file they can grab (which is only
reasonable for small self-contained subroutines like the one here).
(This is especially true for Windows users!)
I've also distributed several large scientific simulation packages with
many dependencies. By and large, users get scared by these dependencies;
they don't know how to build libraries, they don't know how to tell the
compiler/configure/Makefile where to find them, and they don't know how
to tell the runtime linker where to find them. Extensive documentation
helps, but long installation instructions scare people off too.
The only saving grace is that, once your package becomes popular enough
to be packaged by a distro, you can just tell people to "apt-get" (or
whatever) it and all its dependencies. But this takes time.