2010/1/30 Dr. David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net>: > BTW, a 64-bit build of mpir 1.3.0 on an HP-C3600, running HP-UX 11.11B, > results in the results shown below. This is with a PA-RISC processor - I do > not have access to any of the newer Itanium machines. > > This is really good news, as an HP-UX port of Sage seems quite possible, and > would no doubt show up bugs not found on other platforms. > > I have no intension personally of using Sage on HP-UX - why would I want to > use it on a power hungy 552 MHz single CPU device, when I have a quad core > 3.33 GHz Sun that uses a third of the power? > > But from experience, compiling code on multiple platforms often shows up > errors not seen on other platforms, but lie in wait, ready to give the wrong > answers at some point in the future. > > I'm really keen to improve the quality of Sage, and honestly believe that > building on other platforms will show up bugs. Real bugs have been > discovered on both Solaris and HP-UX which have not been seen in the more > common platforms for Sage.
<SNIP> Building Sage on HP-UX is just going to cause an immense amount of grief for a whole load of Sage developers. Why force hundreds of people to work to support a substandard compiler on a system no one is ever going to use Sage on, just so you can catch a few hidden bugs, when we have hundreds of real bugs to fix and mathematical careers to tend to. Let me be absolutely categorical about this. I *DO NOT* support a port of Sage to HP-UX. I will not be involved in such a port. I will not be porting FLINT or any of my other projects to that platform. No future software I write will be written to support HP-UX. If you do all the work yourself, or find someone else who can do it for you, fine by me. But I will not be involved. I do support a port for Solaris and Sparc, because people actually use those platforms. But from my point of view, a native port to Windows is just as important if not more important. The fact that MPIR builds on HP-UX is a coincidence, especially on that particular processor. The assembly code is completely broken for that machine and hence was removed from MPIR in 1.3.0. That's the only reason it builds (that and the fact that GMP always did build on HP-UX and we just haven't degraded it enough for that to no longer be the case). But that is all just a coincidence. It doesn't indicate design on the part of the developers. Bill. -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
