Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

[email protected] (John R. Winans) · Wed, 13 Dec 1995 09:23:35 -0600

>        Again, it would convenient to have pointers in one place, and
>        you could have pointers to your local copies as well as to the
>        standard master sites.  That way APS is not responsible for
>        having the very latest version.  I would keep only the original
>        xxx.tar.Z.

I agree that this should be our minimum offering.  However, as someone who has
spent a great deal of time messing around with things gotten from 'the net'
I must say that it is a REALLY annoying thing to have to figure out what
versions do and don't work with some version of another tool.  Then it gets
worse if the one that I NEED is too old to be found at the expected site.
(Perl's @-syntax change comes to mind... in that case, using the latest 
version was not what if you want to run dusty-deck code.)

I would like to see the EPICS distributions explicitly state what versions
of net-sourced things it was built and/or tested with.  I would also like
to see those tool versions made available at the EPICS distribution sites (if 
reasonable and/or possible.)  This should make it easier for the new guys that
might not know the first thing about some abscure thing that they may not know
exists, how to build or even care about.

This is already done for the lex and yacc that we use in EPICS (although 
these are such an integral part of the epics core that we include them in 
base.)

--John Winans

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System