On 8 June 2010 20:27, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 10:43 AM, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote:
>> I'm probably hitting my head against a wall, but would it not be
>> better if the Sage project decided to actually *test* on certain
>> operating systems and versions before making a release?
>
> The Sage project does actually *test* on certain operating systems and
> versions before making a release.
>
> -- William
>
> --
> William Stein
The problem is that few people know what they are. It would be far
better if README.txt would state, that every single version of Sage is
tested on ... then give a list of operating systems and versions.
At the minute, README.txt says:
"Building of Sage from source is regularly tested on (minimal installs
of) the following platforms:
PROCESSOR OPERATING SYSTEM
x86 32-bit Linux -- Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS (=Red Hat),
Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, Arch
x86_64 64-bit Linux -- Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS (=Red Hat),
Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, Arch
IA-64 Itanium 2 64-bit Linux -- Red Hat, SUSE
x86 Apple Mac OS X 10.4.x, 10.5.x, 10.6.x
PPC Apple Mac OS X 10.4.x, 10.5.x, 10.6.x
Sparc Solaris 10"
"
That is not very helpful.
What I believe we need is a list of systems on which *every* release
of Sage will be built and tested *before* a release is made.
Then someone who wants to *use* Sage would know that choosing one of
those operating systems and versions would give them a workable Sage,
and be reasonably confident that installing a later version of Sage on
that same system will result in another working version of Sage.
If I interceded setting up a Sage server in a college, I'd like to
install an OS that I know Sage will be tested on.
It was not that many months ago when a release was made which did not
build on Fedora, despite Jaap had actually reported the problem before
the release was made. His email got overlooked.
Note also the above says "minimal install". I somewhat doubt that is
the case. I doubt a minimal install on Solaris 10 would include a C
compiler. A thread yesterday with someone with Fedora 12 indicates to
me he might be missing a library from what he says was a minimal
install.
I don't know if it is because of Fedora's high popularity or not, but
Fedora seems to get quite a few issues with Sage. If we state we
support Fedora 11 and 12, then we should test on it. If Fedora bring
out a new release, and Sage does not work, it is not a big problem. We
can resolve that later.
It would be unreasonable to hold up a Sage release because Linux
Fedora/openSUSE/Redhat/Solaris etc have bought out a new release which
does not work. But it is not unreasonable to check Sage before release
on an agreed set of systems. Then users would know what to chose if
they want to use Sage, rather than forever be fighting installation
problems.
Dave
Dave
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