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Re: another c++ request

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  • Subject: Re: another c++ request
  • Date: Wed, 01 Feb 1995 10:33:31 -0700
Hi Dan,

> Russ, I downloaded the patch and it seems to work fine.  May I request
> another thing?  Can the top-level Makefile be modified to move into
> the c++ directory and compile/install that stuff also?  This would
> save manual intervention/errors.  I'm not a system manager, and I have
> just emailed to our system folks to ask them to install the new
> version.  They prefer software that requires less in the way of
> undocumented manual intervention.  If you don't want this to be part
> of the normal
>       make
>       make install
> process, I guess it would be fine to add
>       make c++
>       make install-c++
> targets, so long as they are mentioned clearly in the INSTALL document.  
> 
> Basically, I'm suggesting that the c++ interface is mature enough to
> become a full-fledged cousin of the c interface.  (After all, the ease
> of use of c++ might help overcome the main difficulty I have in
> convincing colleagues that netcdf is worth the learning curve.)
> 
> Thanks again for the rapid help, and I hope the present suggestion is
> useful to you also.

Yes, thanks.  We'll be incorporating the C++ interface more fully into the
next release, but it may still be labeled "experimental", depending on how
far I get in revising it to fit in better with C++ standard library
mechanisms.

Since the top-level Makefile is actually created by the `configure' script,
and we haven't tried to put together all the autoconf machinery to make a
`configure' script that determines whether a C++ compiler is available and
how it should be invoked, it will take some time to implement this.  As an
example of the complications involved, the configure script will have to
determine whether the C++ compiler has sufficient support for exceptions and
templates, and perhaps the code will have to use conditional compilation to
simulate these features if they are not available.

Adding 
        make c++
        make install-c++
install targets is considerably easier, so I'll probably do that first.

--Russ

______________________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                                UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                                          P.O. Box 3000
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/                          Boulder, CO 80307-3000
______________________________________________________________________________