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From: | Ralf Hemmecke |
Subject: | Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: Requiring LaTeX |
Date: | Fri, 01 Sep 2006 22:29:18 +0200 |
User-agent: | Thunderbird 1.5.0.5 (X11/20060719) |
| Latex is not optional, it is not overhead, it is not waste. | If latex is not installed then axiom SHOULD NOT BUILD.
I must say, I don't understand that. If you type "make" that will build the whole system. Why cannot there be some targets like "make binaries", "make doc" to split that process?
Suppose you are an axiom-developer (and you can build everything of Axiom on your local machine). Now person A is posting a message that Axiom does not build on machine X for this or that reason. Let's say the reason is that the binaries don't compile. You have access to a similar machine X' and you have the feeling that you could solve the problem. You checkout Axiom on X' start compilation and... the compilation stops just after trying to latex the first Makefile.pamphlet, because unfortunately, LaTeX is not installed on that machine and you don't have root access to install it.
In any case it simply would cost you too much time to look for a bugfix and so you just say
rm -rf $AXIOMTREEand don't even post on axiom-developer that you had tried to solve the issue.
A build system that builds parts of Axiom with fewer requirements (like building binaries and no .dvi files) is just a PLUS for Axiom. That has NOTHING to do with Tim's wish that Axiom should not (fully) build if LaTeX is not available. It's just support for Axiom developers.
| I get the distinct impression that no-one has really made the | transition to literate programming. I strongly suspect you get a VERY WRONG impression.
I also think so. Tim, it was basically you and all that Axiom stuff that made me try LP. And although I think I've understood the change in mindset, I must admit that it is not completely trivial to change my previous way of programming to an LP style. You can see that from all my code in ALLPROSE and aldor-combinat svn://svn.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/hemmecke/combinat/trunk/combinat
But I will never go back to non-LP. Ralf
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