Re: new GSL version

[Patrick Alken <patrick.alken@Colorado.EDU>]

Hi Brian,

   I admit I haven't followed the windows issues closely at all.

   Is the symlink problem part of the GSL repository, or is it a 
windows/bzr issue? In my current repository, I see the following symlinks:

 > find . -type l
./siman/.gitignore
./doc/.gitignore
./.gitignore
./gsl/.gitignore

Is this what is causing you problems? I imagine all of these can be 
removed since we're not even using git anymore.

Regarding the windows bugs you've reported, are they in the bug tracker 
at all, or just floating around on the bug-gsl list? If they are not in 
the tracker, do you think you would be able to add them (or at least 
point me to the relevant bug-gsl dates), and if there are simple 
solutions, I could try fixing them early next week and sending you a 
test tarball file.

Patrick

On 05/24/2013 12:50 PM, Brian Gladman wrote:
> On 24/05/2013 17:00, Patrick Alken wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>>    I think its time to make a new release of GSL (v1.16). There have been
>> a number of bugfixes and new features added in the last couple years. I
>> don't mind taking the lead on this but I was hoping to get a little
>> feedback from others on whether there are any critical show-stopper bugs
>> at the moment.
>>
>> Yesterday I removed 3 tests from specfun, poly, and cdf which were
>> causing 'make check' to fail on my system. I've created 3 separate bug
>> reports to track these issues on savannah.
>>
>> I admit I haven't been fully following all of the reported bugs, and I'm
>> sure there are plenty on bug-gsl that never made it into the bug
>> tracker. My thinking is that if there are no highly critical bugs at the
>> moment, we should go ahead with the new release, and then focus on bug
>> fixing for the following release. Many of the bugs in the tracker are
>> outside my area of expertise and will involve significant effort to
>> learn the algorithm to fix them, but I'm willing to spend some time in
>> the coming months to look into as many of them as I can.
>>
>> Also if any developers are current working on code they'd like to have
>> in the next release, let me know that too and we can hold off for a
>> little while.
> Hi Patrick
>
> I would certainly appreciate it if you are able to issue a new release
> as I cannot access the GSL repository at all.
>
> The problem is that I work on Windows where the current GSL repository
> is unusable because of its use of symlinks which the Windows versions of
> bzr do not implement.  So attempts to use the repository just report
> errors.
>
> As a result this means that I have not been able to build or test any of
> the features that you and others have implemented since the last release.
>
> I should also add that I have reported and offered fixes for some bugs,
> at least one of which has not been acted on.  Although I realise that
> Windows is not a priority for GSL, it would hardly make sense to leave
> bugs in place just because they have been discovered and fixed on
> Windows (in a fully portable way).
>
> I should also say that I am willing to help out on GSL if the bzr
> repository issue can be overcome in some way (there seems to be very is
> little prospect that the Windows issue will be fixed since, as far as I
> can tell, bzr development appears to have stopped).
>
>     with my best regards,
>
>       Brian Gladman
>