Status of Swarm-2.2 prerelease and 2.1.XXX series. (was "Compile errors on ...")

[Paul E Johnson]

Maybe this is a FAQ entry. I'll take votes and insert something.  Now 
that the FAQ manager is working with the newest mozilla, I can update 
the FAQ again.

I say:

For the last stable release, swarm-2.1.1, there were binary editions for 
all the major OS- various linux, unix, and windows. These are all built 
form the same source code through the magic of gcc, etc.

For a long time, there were updates for the swarm-2.1.1 release. WE 
(Marcus Daniels) released the source code in the ftp.  Marcus Daniels 
was putting compiled binary file updates in a directory named fixes. 
Those were the dll files that we helped people drop into their existing 
swarm setup.  We relied on Marcus Daniels and some volunteers like me to 
make updates in binary form. I do the RedHat updates, Marcus was issuing 
fixes for 2.1.1 on windows.

WHen Marcus's work on 2.2 got pretty far along, Marcus quit issuing the 
little fixes for 2.1.1 and we quit having Swarm as a complete 
replacement for Cygwin, and went back to the idea that people would 
install Cygwin and then install Swarm separately.  For that new setup, 
called 2.2-pre in various notes, you are getting swarm packages in a big 
tarball and you can look in the FAQ to see what to do. You install 
Cygwin, plop in the tarball, and dink with your environment.

Now, about versions, 2.1.140 is a specific snapshot of "swarm 2.2 
prerelease". If you look in the swarm source code, you will see a file 
VERSION which states the version as something like 2.1.140 or such. I 
consider those to be the official versions of the development series and 
that is the number i put on an RPM.

We are eager and willing to have volunteers build snapshots for SOlaris, 
Dec Alpha, MacOS, Debian Linux, Mandrake Linux, and so forth.

Right now, I am in charge of recruiting SDG members to raise some money 
in order to hire a release guy to finalize 2.2.

There are many improvements in the Swarm 2.2 package and i think it is 
very useful (of course, I'm biased because I wrote some of those things, 
and with the help of Marcus Daniels, they are in the system now.  In the 
development series after about 2.1.90 or so, there are significant 
speedups in random number generation and after about 2.1.130 there is 
enhanced serialization support for C arrays and such, as well as 
improved communication between EZGraphs and the Averagers and such that 
they spawn.

If you are building 2.1.140 from scratch, please be aware you need gcc3 
with a little patch we make available. IF you don't want to patch gcc, 
you need to change one little line in the Swarm source code. I've 
documented that to swarm-support in the past, and could again.

An wrote:
> What is the difference between binaries for snapshot releases and the 
> stable release? Applicable in different OS? Thanks.
>
> Li



--
Paul E. Johnson                       email: address@hidden
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn
1541 Lilac Lane, Rm 504
University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66044-3177           FAX: (785) 864-5700


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