[GRASS5] A central site for beta binaries??

[Paul Kelly]

Hello Michael

The release_rules.txt file (
http://freegis.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/grass/documents/release_rules.txt
)
gives details of the procedure that should be followed when compiling
binary distributions. You can try to follow this as closely as possible
and put details of anything you did differently, configure options you
used etc. in a README file to go along with your binary distribution. If
problems are to be reported to the developers mailing list rather than
the person who compiled the binaries, it is *very* important for this
information to be available to the people who will attempt to solve the
problems (it hasn't been in the past and this can be very frustrating).

release_rules.txt also shows how to upload the binaries to the ftp
server and then you can tell Markus and he will make them available. Any
developer with CVS access can update the webpages but copying the binary
.tar.gz, install script and README into the appropriate directory may be
all the work that is needed.

In that file, the step about compiling PNGDriver can be ignored (this is
done automatically). When I am somewhere I have CVS access I will delete
this bit and try to update the instructions for shared libraries and the
alternate build system. Also if you are using a shared PROJ.4 it would
probably be a good idea to copy it into $GISBASE/lib as well as libgdal.
	
Also there is no point in providing any more binaries for 5.0.x. Just
5.3 and 5.7. Another hint is that you should try to compile for the
lowest spec of system and oldest operating system version you can, as
the binaries will be more likely to work on a wider variety of systems
then.

Paul

Michael Barton wrote:
> 
> It seems that quite a few people have compiled binaries for the current beta (i.e. 5.3) and alpha (i.e 5.7) GRASS distributions under a variety of platforms. I know of or have heard of at least Linnux, Mac OSX, and Cygwin.
> 
> Currently the GRASS site has a simple www ftp page where the current source snapshots are available for download. What would be the possibility/level of difficulty of making a simple www ftp page for these experimental binaries? They could be linked to the appropriate table cell in the grass downloads page (binaries column, snapshot row). They could be accompanied by appropriate disclaimers (e.g., "These binaries are supplied by volunteers assisting the GRASS development team, and represent an in-development version to be used at your own risk for testing purposes. Feedback on the functionality of this experimental version is strongly encouraged and should be directed to [the bug reporting site? the list?? other??].")
> 
> This would make it easier for a larger number of people to participate in GRASS development and testing--and advertise GRASS's future development directions.
> 
> I offer this as a suggestion without knowing how much additional management burden this might place on the Trento team.
> ______________________________
> Michael Barton, Professor & Curator
> Department of Anthropology
> Arizona State University
> Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
> USA
> 
> voice: 480-965-6262; fax: 480-965-7671