Improve the "Build Support" & "Quality" sections of the "Inclusion Procedure for New Packages" page in the Developers Guide

[drkirkby]

​http://www.sagemath.org/doc/developer/inclusion.html

has some inaccurate information what needs to happen for including a new package in Sage with regard to the compilers that are to be used, and the systems Sage work on. According to that page, the package needs to build on

• Microsoft Windows: x86, x86_64 MSVC 2005/Intel Fortran (MinGW or Cygwin support is insufficient!)
• Solaris 10: Sparc, x86, x86_64 (Sun Forte 12)
• Linux (SPARC).

Although building Sage with the latest Sun and Microsoft compilers would be nice, in practice it is not going to happen any time soon.

I'm not sure if the Linux(SPARC) is a mistake, or intensional, but very few people run Linux on SPARC hardware. We might as well forget any thoughts of that.

Basically the "Build Support" section of the Developers Guide needs some work.

We should also add a link to

​http://wiki.sagemath.org/SupportedPlatforms

so we only need to update the list in one place.

It is probably true the "License" section in the "Inclusion Procedure for New Packages" needs attention. But that appears to be a huge can of worms, and is best left for a ticket to be created by a very brave person!!

There are clearly other parts of the Sage Developers Guide that need attention, but this ticket is only concerned with the "Build Support" issue.

[drkirkby]

Patch for the Sage Developers Guide, which removes references to most specific platforms, and provides a link to supported platforms.

[drkirkby]

I've attached a patch for the developers guide, which removes references to specific supported platforms, but provides a link to those supported.

The changes also give some advice on what steps can be taken to ensure packages work on the supported platforms.

Here's the original page, with all the platforms mentioned, and a totally out of date set of compilers:

​http://www.sagemath.org/doc/developer/inclusion.html

Here's the revised copy, with very little emphasis on specific systems, but with links to our supported systems.

​http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/kirkby/sage-4.5.alpha4/devel/sage-main/doc/output/html/en/developer/inclusion.html

There's a short additional paragraph about how to improve the portability of packages, but it is not detailed.

I also added a note that usually a new standard package must have spent some time as an optional package.

Dave

[dimpase]

I would be more careful in explaining the license question, as it regularly pops up on sage-devel. What is currently written, or what is in proposed changes, can be easily misread as "code must be under GPLv2, or code must be under GPLv2 or later GPL version). Is there a canonical reference/link on this to be included?

Dima

[drkirkby]

Replying to dimpase:

I would be more careful in explaining the license question, as it regularly pops up on sage-devel. What is currently written, or what is in proposed changes, can be easily misread as "code must be under GPLv2, or code must be under GPLv2 or later GPL version). Is there a canonical reference/link on this to be included?

Dima

Yes, I agree with you. I've raised the issue on sage-devel. Once there's some agreement about the wording, I'll add that. I think it's a sufficiently important point it needs discussion there, rather than just on this trac ticket.

Dave

[drkirkby]

Dima,

I've come to the conclusion that the licenses issues are a minefield and addressing them would be opening a huge can of worms. Hence I've restricted the title of this ticket, to make it clearer the sections actually addressed, and I will not address the license section.

My original aim was to sort out the issues related to supported platforms. As such I'm marking it for review again.

Dave