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SAGE OS/2-eCS Port Bounty

Started by miturbide, 2008.03.20, 01:36:52

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miturbide


Supporting thread for the SAGE OS/2-eCS Port bounty.
Martín Itúrbide
OS2World.com NewsMaster
Open Source Advocate

Skype - martiniturbide
Google Talk - martiniturbide@gmail.com

phil

general SAGE URL: <http://www.sagemath.org/>

Complete Source Code  (With All Dependencies!): <http://www.sagemath.org/dist/src/index.html>

Quotes from the SAGE Web site:

Use an Open Source Alternative
By using SAGE you help to support a viable open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and MATLAB. SAGE includes many high-quality open source math packages.

Use a Standard Programming Language
You work with SAGE using the highly regarded scripting language Python instead of an obscure language designed for a particular mathematics program. You can write programs that combine serious mathematics with anything else.

Create Notebooks with your Web Browser
Use SAGE from your web browser, which connects either to a program running on your computer, or a program running elsewhere. With the SAGE notebook you can create embedded graphics, beautifully typeset mathematical expressions, add and delete input, and start up and interrupt multiple calculations.

I'm sponsoring the bounty.
I find [in mathematics] a wonderful beauty. This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity.---Turjan of Miir (Jack Vance)

phil

SAGE has recently been updated: v3.2.3 (2009-01-08).

This bounty is higher than most, so I'm wondering.  Is there some peculiarity about a port of SAGE that makes it exceedingly difficult?  If the bounty were higher, would that get a port done sooner?  Or would it matter at all?

Do any porters have any interest whatsoever in doing this port?
I find [in mathematics] a wonderful beauty. This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity.---Turjan of Miir (Jack Vance)

abwillis

#3
I started looking at it in September.  I made a bit of minor progress and laid it aside for other things.
The problem is the approach that was used for the build.  SAGE being a collection of apps that are built together means building several projects at one time.  This wouldn't be too bad, and in some ways would almost make it easier.  However, they tar these files in some format that means I have to try to recreate it, otherwise, all my changes are lost on the next make.  Each iteration of make untars each package regardless of any other consideration.  It took me awhile to figure out that I can't use the latest tar to work with the package as it didn't handle the piping that was being done. 
Now that GCC 4.3.3 is available, it may make it somewhat easier as I seem to recall having to do some work to get around having an "older" compiler.
The readme says:
Sage builds with GCC >= 3.x and GCC >= 4.1.x
http://www.sagemath.org/doc/inst/node5.html   says it has to be at least 3.4.x
it also says that 4.3.0 does not yet work.

phil

SAGE is now at version 4.4.4 as of 2010-06-24.

In case anyone is interested, I've been trying to increase the bounty by USD 100 for months now. If and when PayPal, my browser, and my credit card begin to cooperate with each other, I'll do it.

For me, PayPal is just a big PITA. The only success I've ever had with it was the initial USD 200 bounty, which occurred only because I borrowed a Windows XP box to do it. PayPal has never worked for me via OS/2-eCS.

So, is anyone interested in this bounty? How high does the bounty need to be before anyone might become interested? Or should I put my money somewhere else and forget about SAGE?
I find [in mathematics] a wonderful beauty. This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity.---Turjan of Miir (Jack Vance)

Paul Smedley

Hi Phil,

I started playing with Sage the other day.  I got several of the required support packages building.  Like Andy said, it's a real PITA, as many of the libs it wants to build, I already have installed on my system, but SAGE insists on building them anyway - and of course, it includes source without OS/2 patches.

So 1st one has to patch the code to get it building, then re-tar the source and replace the included package.

When I get some more free time I'll take another look at it, but I wouldn't want to name a $$$ bounty when I still don't know if it will be possible to build....

phil

Is there any place on the SAGE site to ask why they insist on rebuilding things already built, over and over again if I understand you and Andy correctly? And why one can't use the already-existing libraries one has? Is it "OpenSource correct" to change things so much that they have to be rebuilt without changing the name and/or version number?

If I understand correctly, it seems one %$#@ of a backward way to go about doing things.  While it may be for mathematicians, it doesn't sound like one had anything to do with designing it. Research math is a lot of reusing things as much as possible before creating new ones; reuse in new and clever ways, sure -- but not reinventing the wheel every time you need something that even resembles one!

If this sounds too naive, it's probably because I'm not a programmer of any sort. I'm a mathematician who just wants more choice in computer-aided math apps, and who insists they run on OS/2-eCS.
I find [in mathematics] a wonderful beauty. This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity.---Turjan of Miir (Jack Vance)

abwillis

Quote from: phil on 2010.07.11, 10:32:25
Research math is a lot of reusing things as much as possible before creating new ones; reuse in new and clever ways, sure -- but not reinventing the wheel every time you need something that even resembles one!
Well, in a sense that is actually what they are doing... reusing I mean.  They are taking packages that "work" and bundling them.  The problem comes when they don't work.  Because they have a "working" package they just reuse it.  For them it was simpler to just always untar the package for each time it is being built than to build a build system to check if changes were made (which is obviously not anticipated).  I can see why they did it the way they did, it just makes it a horrible pain to port.  Ideally, each of the individual packages would have the OS/2 changes added to their source and then Sage would just build out of the box once they updated to the code that contained those patches.
Andy

phil

Sage 4.7 was released on 23 May 2011. It is available at

           http://www.sagemath.org/download.html

* About Sage (http://www.sagemath.org)

Sage is developed by volunteers and combines over 90 open source packages.
It is available for download from www.sagemath.org and its mirrors in
source or binary form. If you have any questions and/or problems,
please report them to any of these Google groups:

  * sage-support: http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support
  * sage-devel: http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel

You can also drop by in #sagemath on freenode. Please report build and
doctest results to the Google group

  * sage-release: http://groups.google.com/group/sage-release
I find [in mathematics] a wonderful beauty. This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity.---Turjan of Miir (Jack Vance)