Re: amber-developers: AIX test case failures

From: Scott Brozell <sbrozell.scripps.edu>
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:57:38 -0700 (PDT)

Hi,

On Sat, 12 Apr 2008, David A. Case wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 11, 2008, Scott Brozell wrote:
> >
> > Yes, non gnu building of AmberTools seems to have been an afterthought.
>
> I don't think this has much to do with gnu or nongnu. Basically, none of the
> developers, or earlier users of NAB, use AIX. So, it never gets tested.

I made several corrections to the irix and solaris sections.
It seems that only gnu was used.


> > If we go non gnu then configure_at should be made consistent
> > with configure_amber.
>
> The two are substantially different: AmberTools requires C and C++, plus a
> fortran program capable of compiling mopac (so far, only g77 and gfortran are
> known to work).

The two are almost the same. Remember that what we are calling
configure_amber was recently called configure and was used to build
everything except nab.

By consistent, I mean of the interfaces and implementations:
Flags and compilers/architectures should have the same names.
There may be some subtle distinction between sparc and solaris_cc,
but is that worth the extra burden on users ?
Variable names with the same meaning inside configure_amber and
configure_at should have the same name
(compare machine in configure_amber and processor in configure_at).

In fact, I go further and suggest that it might be better to merge
them into one script.


> Amber mainly requires an F95 compiler, with much smaller dependency on C.
> (We could almost get by without the need for a C compiler, but I think that
> netcdf needs one.)
>
> So, each needs to be correct.

Consistency and correctness go hand in hand.


Ive probably gone overboard with the devil's advocate approach in
this email, but Ive just finished my taxes; so what can we expect
from my overexposure to low level languages:
subtract line 28 from line 27; if line 29 is zero or more then
goto line 33; otherwise stand on your head until the blood pools.

Imagine a numerate populace that could understand
high level languages. Maybe we could use taxes to combat innumeracy.

Scott
Received on Fri Apr 18 2008 - 21:18:58 PDT
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