19990207: building site developed code to Unidata McIDAS (cont.)

>From: Anthony James Wimmers <address@hidden>
>Organization: UVa
>Keywords: 199901271455.HAA12002 McIDAS user code

Jennie, Tony, and Owen,

re: Jennie's comments
>Okay, I think I see what happened. Owen did get a recent update, this
>was so we could get a new version of the front drawing routine which
>was updated to deal with changing headers.  He installed the update
>on Friday.  I had gone over the procedure of running the makefile
>with him, but had in fact instructed him to not make any changes
>to it (they shouldn't have been needed for what he was
>doing).  However, it didn't occur to me that the update would
>include a new makefile.  Is this common practice, or was it
>because of the unique change in the compilers?

The 'makefile' gets updated when new routines are added to the
distribution and when there are other changes that are needed (duh
:-).  Usually, 'makefile' does not get updated.  In this instance, we
wanted to get out mods that allow Solaris x86 users to build using gcc
(or egcs gcc) and f2c.  This was deemed important since the mods allow
a site to _not_ have to purchase the Sun development environment in
order to build McIDAS (a savings of approx. $400 on Solaris x86).  In
future releases, it is likely that the use of gcc/f2c will be allowed
for all operating systems.

>I did just
>look and our mccomp file has a time stamp of Friday, as Tom
>suspected.  

Right.

>Actually, I don't think Owen should have had to change anything in the 
>makefile, but the update included a new makefile, and when Owen untarred 
>the update, he unwittingly clobbered the makefile, right?

Right.  In your case (seeing as how you are doing development), it
may be wise to list out the contents of mcupdate.tar.Z before extracting
the files.  The files in the update are added in a chronological order
such that the oldest files are in the beginning and the newest are at
the end.

>Right, because it sounds like Tony went back and got a backup copy of the 
>makefile which we had made *before* we started messing with adding
>the RT code.

Right.

re: does your makefile contain the COMPILERS macro
>Nope.  

It is easy to add.

>Thanks Tom!  

No problem.

>Sorry Tony, it shouldn't have been such a hassle,
>looks like you stayed a couple hours after me trying to
>puzzle it out.  Bummer.

Ditto.

Tom